Today is the second day of spring! Isn’t it wonderful? March came in like lion and it looks like it’s going to go out like a lamb; so I’m going to illustrate this post with baby animals to offset the contents of this post, which will be about police violence. Spring fever and computer problems have combined to put me in the mood for baby animals photos. I hope you’ll enjoy them too.
I got really down the last few days because my computer went haywire–after only six months! But I’ve accepted it now, and I’m determined to deal with it as gracefully as I can. I have to send it back to the manufacturer for repairs, so I’ll be without a good computer for a couple of weeks. Fortunately, I have a backup. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but it works.
The University of Virginia is back in the news. Martese Johnson, an honor student at UVA was beaten by Alcohol and Beverage Control (ABC) officers outside a Charlotte bar on Wednesday night. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that this young man is black. The incident has led to anger and protests on the UVA campus. From the LA Times:
Following a night of heated protests, officials in Charlottesville, Va., on Thursday scrambled to defuse the anger sparked by the arrest of a black University of Virginia student outside a bar.
Martese Johnson, 20, had just been denied entry into a bar near the University of Virginia campus early Wednesday when he was questioned by agents with the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, the agency said.
Johnson’s attorney said during his client’s arrest he was thrown to the ground and hit his head on the pavement, gushing blood and requiring stitches.
Johnson was charged with two counts: obstruction of justice without force and public swearing or intoxication.
Oh dear. Public swearing? No wonder he got his head bloodied. /s
In a news conference Thursday, Johnson’s attorney called him an “upstanding young man” and a scholarship student with “no criminal record whatsoever.”
“As the officers held me down, one thought raced through my mind: How could this happen?” Johnson said in a statement read by his attorney, Daniel Watkins….
Watkins also said that despite media reports claiming Johnson had furnished a fake ID, the student supplied a “valid Illinois state identification card issued in 2011” when an employee at the bar asked him for one.
Oh. I see. He was under age, so of course he deserved the beating. /s
The official answer was that agents of the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) had seen the 20-year-old University of Virginia student being denied entry to the Trinity Irish Pub in Charlottesville.
But that does not explain why the ABC agents chose Johnson in particular.
He surely was not the only person to be turned away from an Irish bar at the edge of a college campus on St. Patrick’s Day.
Yet, he seems to have been the only one who was arrested.
Interesting. Of course he happened to have black skin and that probably made him stand out to the ABC officers.
Johnson had never been in trouble with the law and was understandably surprised to find himself suddenly grabbed by the ABC agents who asked him about a fake ID. He told them he did not have one and reflexively asked them to let go of his arm.
The ABC agents responded by slamming him to the sidewalk like he was a gunman after a shootout, causing a head wound that would require 10 stitches to close.
Johnson repeatedly declared himself to be a legitimate college student.
“I go to UVa! I go to UVa! I go to UVa!” he cried out.
What other explanation is there for this incident other than racism? Read the rest at the link.
A group of black students walked out of a University of Virginia student meeting in protest this afternoon, claiming they were left out of the planning of the event that stemmed from the bloody arrest this week of fellow African-American student Martese Johnson.
Johnson, who was in attendance, also left after the group dominated the first part of the sometimes contentious meeting with their questions for panelists, who included the Charlottesville police chief, the state’s secretary of public safety, which oversees state alcohol control agents, and UVA police. An overflow room contained more people, in addition to the 350 attendees in the main room….
Today’s on-campus meeting, set up by the student council and local and state officials, was titled “A Conversation with Law Enforcement.” Members of the black community at UVA said they were angry that they were excluded from the planning of the event by the student council. A group of black students quickly dominated the first part of this event with their questions.
Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo acknowledged this has been a hard year for everyone in the university community, noting that the school has been put on the national stage three times in the last seven months. “What happened this past week has shaken your trust. It is my responsibility as the police chief to regain your trust. I commit to you today to do that,” Longo said.
But often when he and other speakers were asked a question, students standing in the aisle said together: “Answer the question we asked” with their fists in the air.
The student protesters brought up an incident that happened Wednesday evening, where a University of Virginia police officer allegedly arrested a student in a chokehold. Captain Mike Coleman with the UVA PD said that situation is currently under review.
About 100 of the student protesters walked out of the meeting chanting, “Black lives matter.” The meeting continued for about 40 minutes afterwards, though most people had already left.
That doesn’t sound like a very productive meeting….
At Slate, Jamie Bouie writes “if you want to understand the anger over the police misconduct and brutal arrest of a UVA student, you must also understand UVA.” Of course the incident also relates to police violence against black males–an issue that has been front and center since the Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri last year. It’s a long article, and you should go read the whole thing, but I’ll give you a couple of excerpts.
Johnson is black, and for himself as well as other students, this linked his experience to other incidents of police violence against black men, part of a larger narrative of race and policing, and reflected in the rhetoric of the protests. Students, black and white, chanted “Black Lives Matter” and “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” the slogan derived from early—and false—reports of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. No, Johnson wasn’t killed, but his experience resonated with black students at UVA. “It’s still hard for me,” said one law school student at a Wednesday rally for Johnson. “I can’t believe I’m even up here right now, I have no words—because I’m sick and tired of this,” he said. “What I’m going to do is to continue to say that black lives matter until it’s true.”
Bouie describes the state of race relations at UVA:
What’s more, there’s the particular racial atmosphere of the university. It would be inaccurate and unfair to say that all black students at UVA share a common experience of the school and its institutions. Some find community in the student mainstream, others in the rich collection of black organizations and clubs, and others still in their particular networks of friends and classmates. But while experiences vary, many black students can speak to moments of racial tension and outright racist aggression. “People call you the N-word and say that you don’t belong here. They don’t realize what that does to the psyche. Then you have to go to class,” explained one protester in an interview with ThinkProgress. To that point, I spoke with one alumnus who was once taunted with racial slurs while walking through campus, and another who could point to multiple incidents across his college career. Indeed, my first month at UVA was marked by a rash of racial disturbances, including one in which a black student living in a prestigious “Lawn” room—adjacent to the Rotunda, at the center of the university—was greeted with racist epithets (including “Nigger”) on his door.
And beyond these individual experiences is the broad context of black life at the UVA.For most of the last decade, first-year black enrollment held steady at 9 percent. As of 2012, it had dipped to 6 percent, which school officials attribute to the recession, weak economy, and a lack of outreach to younger students and their families. It says something of the present university environment that, out of the 47 Lawn room assignments for the 2015 school year, not a single one of the honors went to a black student….
At a school as large as UVA, shrinking black enrollment—and the persistence of racial microaggressions—can create the feeling of isolation, even as the school keeps its commitment to programs and services for black students and other students of color, from a strong mentoring program and dedicated Office of African-American Affairs to merit scholarships for minority students and a dedicated team of minority college recruiters.
It all adds up to a fraught environment of unresolved problems, where police violence against a black student sparks mass protests of dissatisfied students—black and white—and the school administration joinsthe criticism. UVA President Teresa Sullivan declared her “commitment to seeking the truth about this incident,” while Marcus Martin, joined with the school’s dean of African-American affairs, Maurice Apprey, to condemn the entire incident. “We are outraged by the brutality against a University of Virginia undergraduate student that occurred in the early hours Wednesday, March 18, 2015,” reads their statement. “This was wrong and should not have occurred. In the many years of our medical, professional and leadership roles at the University, we view the nature of this assault as highly unusual and appalling based on the information we have received.”
When will it end? We need a serious effort in this country to seek law enforcement officers at every level who understand racial prejudice and are committed to ending it. Officers also need to be trained in techniques to deal with violent and/or mentally ill suspects other than shooting and killing them. There have been a number of recent incidents of violence against black men by law enforcement officers around the country. This issue must be addressed, if necessary at the Federal level. A few more links to recent stories on police violence:
Now, what stories are you following today. I hope you’ll post links in the comment thread, and I promise to click on every one. Have a great weekend, Sky Dancers!
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I’ve spent this week getting used to some changes in my schedule and activities while trying to find a way to get all the things paid for above and beyond teaching for what seems like next to nothing any more. One of the things I learned this week is that some things really never change.
Bourbon Street, New Orleans is pretty much an endless parade of the same kinds of people in the same groups with the same clothes and looks on their faces. I’ve never gigged on Bourbon Street until this week even though I’ve gigged around New Orleans and the French Quarter a lot over the 20 years I’ve lived here. I usually play at upscale restaurants so mostly, I’m very much in the background.
I’m still somewhat in the background but now it’s more like being the music behind the performance. I’m accompanying a very talented drag performer with an awesome voice and having great fun! I hope you enjoy the pictures! I’m going to share a few other stories that are locally relevant and not as happy. So, this top picture is Miss Jessica Duplantier singing with me checking out her show last week. You’ll see a lot more of her and Eureka Starfish as the post goes on.
I’ve been thinking once again on how tribal human beings can be and how easily we forget how badly we can treat each other. I also think we all have convenient short memories and long standing insensitivities to wrong done to others. I’m getting tired of watching racism parade its ugly head. I’m also getting extremely tired of people acting willfully ignorant about things that seriously represent injurious historical actions.
The 2015 Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival poster was unveiled Tuesday (March 17), and immediately provoked a social media debate, with some calling the image racist.
The poster, created by artist Kalle Siekkinen, depicts two faceless children rendered in dark brown or black paint. One holds a flat of strawberries. The poster made the rounds on various Facebook pages, with some saying the image, done in a folk art style, implied cultural insensitivity. Others wrote that such concerns were misplaced.
Shelley Matherne, public relations director for the Strawberry Festival, said that the annual poster is produced by the Ponchatoula Kiwanis Club and that officials of the festival had not seen the work until Thursday’s unveiling. They became aware of the controversy via social media. Festival organizers are meeting with Kiwanis representatives Thursday (March 19) evening to discuss how to proceed, Matherne said.
I have followed, spoke to and seen most of the social media storm. I cannot believe that folks do not recognize the “pickaninny” stereotype and what it means to the historical movement to dehumanize and infantilize Black Americans. You can look at the variety of comments there exclaiming that it’s racist free ‘folk art’ showcasing black children and judge for yourself. The Festival people are standing by the poster and the poster’s defenders are vociferous. I’m still appalled and I stand by that.
U.S. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 3 House Republican who has been criticized in the past by civil rights leaders, stayed at a posh Georgia resort with his wife earlier this month rather than attend events in Alabama marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma civil rights march.
A newly filed congressional “post-travel” disclosure dated Wednesday shows Scalise skipped the Selma event to attend a Republican “off-the-record” retreat hosted in Sea Island, Ga. The event was hosted by the American Enterprise Institute from March 5-8.
CLAIBORNE COUNTY, MS (Mississippi News Now) –The FBI and the MBI are investigating a suspicious death in Claiborne County.
A body was found on property located off of Rodney Road.
The Coroner, J.W. Mallett, confirms the man was found hanging from a tree. Officials say the body was hung using bed sheets.
According to the Coroner the body has not yet been identified because the body has apparently been there so long that identification, by visual means, is nearly impossible. The body has been sent to the State Crime Lab for autopsy.
The Claiborne County branch of the NAACP is indicating the man found hanging is Otis Byrd.
The FBI is only saying that he is a “man last seen March 2nd; and his family filed a missing persons report with the Claiborne County Sheriff’s Department on March 8th.”
In a news release, the FBI say the body was found during a ground search by the Claiborne County Sheriff’s Department and the Mississippi Wildlife Fisheries and Parks.
54-year-old Otis James Byrd was last seen when a friend dropped him off at Vicksburg’s Riverwalk Casino earlier this month.
His family and friends hadn’t heard from him since then.
The NAACP has now sent an email requesting the US Department of Justice “join the current investigation of the suspicious hanging death of Mr. Otis Byrd.”
The email goes on to say: “Mr. Otis Byrd’s body was [found] today, Thursday, March 19, 2015. After several days of missing, [he] was found hanged to death.”
The FBI says the body was found “a half mile from his last know residence.”
Some odd things have been happening in the city that relate to a really strange true crime case. I thought I’d bring up the arrest and extradition of Robert Durst. It’s one of those stories that makes you wonder how our society can manage to let so many folks rot in jail for very little while a true sociopath can wander about at will. I guess you shouldn’t wonder too much because the guy is and was rich and can pretty much afford to work the justice system. It’s a strange story, nonetheless.
Durst was arrested Saturday in New Orleans in connection with the 2000 fatal shooting of Berman at her Benedict Canyon home. He was charged Monday with murder, and the next day transferred to the mental health facility at a state-run prison in Louisiana.
His extradition to California has been delayed as authorities in New Orleans deal with the drugs and weapons allegations.
Meanwhile, New York authorities remain interested in Durst as they continue to investigate what happened to his first wife, Kathleen, who disappeared in 1982.
Kathleen Durst vanished after she expressed the desire for a divorce. To a friend, she had confided worries about what her husband might do.
Following the disappearance, Berman acted as an “informal spokesman” for Durst. The pair had met at UCLA, where they went to school together.
Prosecutors in Los Angeles allege that Durst killed Berman to prevent her from speaking to police about the disappearance of his wife. Durst could face the death penalty for the murder charge with special circumstances.
Less than a year after Berman’s death, Durst turned up in Galveston, Texas, in connection with the killing of an elderly neighbor, Morris Black. Black’s dismembered body, in several plastic bags, was discovered in the waters offshore. A trail of clues led to Durst’s arrest.
Durst didn’t deny dismembering Black, but he said he inadvertently shot him while wrestling a gun from him.
A jury acquitted him in 2003.
Although Durst’s life has seen a series of high-profile brushes with the law, suspicions about him exploded into a national sensation as they played out in a six-part HBO series, “The Jinx.”
Murder suspect Robert Durst, subject of HBO’s ‘The Jinx,’ had more than $42,000 in cash, a fake ID and a latex mask when authorities arrested him in New Orleans last weekend, newly obtained records show.
Inside Durst’s hotel room at the J.W. Mariott on Canal Street, police say they found $42,631 in cash, mostly in $100 bills packed in small envelopes, according to an affidavit for a warrant to search Durst’s home in Houston, signed by a judge in Harris County, Texas, on Tuesday (March 17).
The new details were made public Wednesday after authorities in Houston searched the real-estate scion’s home at the request of Los Angeles officials, who have charged Durst in the 2000 death of his longtime confidante and spokesperson, Susan Berman.
According to the document, members of the FBI’s Violent Offenders Task Force found Durst on in the lobby of the hotel a little before 7 p.m. Saturday. When FBI Special Agent William Williams approached the 71-year-old man from behind and identified himself, Durst had a small backpack with him but claimed he did not have any type of identification.
When agents searched Durst’s room — he was staying in room 2303 under the name Everette Ward — they found a Texas ID with the same alias, and not his real name, the record states.
“That’s pretty good,” Durst said to the agents when confronted with the fake ID, according to the Texas document.
So, now I suppose I will have to watch the HBO thing.
Well, that’s enough for me today. I’m going back to sleep for awhile! What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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The day tends to leave a bad taste in my mouth because I associate it with the stubborn exclusion of LGBT people from the South Boston parade and with the riots against school busing in South Boston back in the 1970s. I can’t seem to get those associations out of my mind. I do have some Irish ancestry, but I identify more strongly with the Scottish and French Candian parts of my ethnic makeup.
St. Patrick’s Day in Boston
This year there finally was a change in the traditional Southie parade. From the Christian Science Monitor:
For the first time in its 115-year history, South Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day parade will include groups representing the LGBT community.
OUTVETS and Boston Pride will march in the two-mile parade, which celebrates St. Patrick’s Day and Evacuation Day, the anniversary of the departure of British troops from Boston in 1776. The Allied War Veterans Council, who organizes the parade, accepted the application from OUTVETS, an organization for gay, lesbian, and transgender veterans and service members. On Friday, Boston Pride was invited to participate in the parade as well.
It’s too little, too late, but still a step in the right direction. This year the Mayor of Boston marched in the parade for the first time in 20 years because the ugly ban was finally lifted. But some people still couldn’t accept the change after all these years.
The Massachusetts chapter of the Knights of Columbus cited what they characterized as politicization of the event as their reason for not participating this year.
“We deeply regret that some have decided to use this occasion to further the narrow objectives of certain special interests, which has subjected this occasion to undeserved division and controversy,” the group’s statement read.
Last month, the Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Harvard, Mass., withdrew from the parade because OUTVETS had been invited to march, according to Irish Live. The Catholic Action League, requested that the Allied War Veterans Council rename the parade.
“Call it the Evacuation Day Parade. Call it the South Boston Irish Pride Festival,” Catholic Action League Executive Director C.J. Doyle wrote on the group’s website. “Call it whatever you want, but don’t debase the name of Saint Patrick by associating it with the tawdry circus that will take place on Broadway [Street] tomorrow.”
As Joan Rivers used to say, “Oh, grow up!” Some people who pretend to be Christians are sure filled with hate. You see why I’ve gotten turned off by this day?
But it really is a hard-won breakthrough. The New York Times reports:
BOSTON — Despite a gray chill and spits of rain that gave way to a downpour and later snow, hundreds of thousands of people celebrated a new chapter in this city’s history on Sunday as the storied South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade opened its ranks for the first time to gays and lesbians.
“To be included in this parade and be part of this parade is just really special for us,” said David Story, 65, a finance manager and a veteran of the Air Force. A member of OutVets, which honors lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender veterans, he and other members wore navy blue jackets branded with the group’s logo and a rainbow.
“We’re marching not just for us, but for all the closeted L.G.B.T. people who have been in the Air Force, are in the military, for years past, and the ones that may be in now,” he said.
The South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, a private group that organizes the 114-year-old parade, had banned gay groups from participating for decades, saying it was no place for people who were vocal about their sexual orientation. In 1995, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld what it said was the group’s First Amendment right to exclude whomever it wanted.
But that stance turned the parade into an annual battleground for the gay-rights movement, and it forced many Massachusetts politicians, including Boston’s mayor, to skip the parade, which is an essential part of Boston history and culture. Not only does it celebrate the city’s important Irish heritage, but the parade also honors a Revolutionary War holiday unique to Boston and its environs called Evacuation Day. On March 17, 1776, the Continental Army, under the command of George Washington, forced the British to retreat.
You can read more about the history of this conflict at the CSM and NYT links.
Politicians party at St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast 2015
Another long-time Boston tradition is the annual St. Patrick’s Day breakfast at which local politicians get together to tell lame jokes and try to get Irish votes at the same time. This year’s version included a reportedly embarrassing appearance by Vice President Joe Biden, who might have been downing a wee bit of green beer early in the day.
Vice President Joe Biden’s phoned-in appearance at the annual St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in South Boston Sunday was a bit long. It was not terribly funny. And his ode to Irish heritage was more maudlin than moving.
After one attempted — but failed — interruption by the host, state Senator Linda Dorcena Forry, and some awkward silences, the vice president finally yielded to US Representative Stephen F. Lynch….
Sunday’s notable first came not at the breakfast, but at the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade that followed, with organizers allowing two organizations representing gay men and lesbians to take part after years of court battles and recriminations.
US Senator Edward J. Markey, echoing a line from Irish poet Seamus Heaney, sought to link the two events in a paean to inclusivity. “On a day in South Boston, when Linda is to host and the LGBT community can march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade,” he said, “hope and history are rhyming.”
Amid the often flat attempts at humor, a few of the speakers, riffing on Boston’s Olympic bid and the failures of the storm-ravaged MBTA, managed to elicit guffaws from the hundreds dining on sausage and eggs at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
US Senator Elizabeth Warren, who got more laughs than most, took a shot at an erstwhile political rival.
“Since the last time I was here, I’ve really focused on the economy. There are a lot of people out there who have entirely given up on looking for work,” Warren said, pausing for a moment. “But enough about Scott Brown.”
Boston isn’t the only city with weird traditions around this day. I just noticed that in Chicago, they dye the river green!
What does your city, state or country do on St. Patrick’s Day?
Today’s News
I found quite a bit of interesting news this morning, so I’m just going to throw out a bunch of links and you can take what you want and leave the rest.
It’s election day in Israel, and it will be interesting to see whether Benjamin Netanyahu can pull out a win (I hope not).
The controversy over Tom Cotton’s letter to Iran’s “leaders” continues.
At Rolling Stone, Jeb Lund writes about “a long history of right wing mayhem” in a piece with the same title (I assume deliberately) of a 1964 far right anti-communist screed, by John Stormer, None Dare Call It Treason.
It never ceases to amaze me how women, their bodies, and their most intimate moments can be co-opted by male politicians. It makes me want to sing a rousing chorus of “You don’t FUCKING own me!”. I’m not sure how we became political footballs, but I sure feel like my privacy and the privacy of every woman in the country has become a source of intense male interest. The absolutely salacious way that the male-dominated press and republican party are going after Hillary’s most personal emails is just one example of how the current patriarchy feels they have a right to view anything of ours and control it. Like James Carville said recently Hillary Clinton ‘Didn’t Want Louie Gohmert Rifling Through Her E-Mails’. Who would?
Longtime Clinton ally James Carville said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail account might have been about more than convenience.
Appearing on ABC’s This Week on Sunday,Carville defended Clinton, saying her e-mail practices were legal. But, he added, she may also have had prying Republican eyes in mind when she chose to do business through a private e-mail server.
“I suspect she didn’t want Louie Gohmert rifling though her e-mails, which seems to me to be a kind of reasonable position for someone to take,” Carville said.
As part of presidential hopeful Jeb Bush’s quest to counteract his last name, he released a trove of purportedly personal emails in the name of “transparency.” That’s nice, but utterly symbolic: The emails he released were from a public-facing account that he used primarily to communicate with random constituents, not to actually govern. It’s as though he released his spam inbox and proclaimed it as a window into his soul. If Bush really wants to make a statement, he’ll give us the data that actually matters.
In addition to being filled with personally identifiable information that his constituents sent to him in the hopes of resolving their various troubles with state agencies, Jeb Bush’s big noble email dump is completely misleading. “In the spirit of transparency,” Bush states on his newwebsite, “I am posting the emails of my governorship here.” But all that he’s made available is the contents of one email account—jeb@jeb.org. That domain was registered via GoDaddy in 1997 and is owned by his political campaign operation—it is unaffiliated with the state of Florida or the office of governor (his official account was like some variant of[name]@eog.state.fl.us). The emails the public has been given are as much “the emails of [his] governorship” as my ancient live.com inbox would be “the emails of my Gawker job.” It’s a ploy.
Early last week, while the political world was waiting for Hillary Clinton to address the moral, diplomatic, and technological questions posed by her e-mail habits, the United Nations issued a report asserting that more than one in three women experience sexual or physical violence in their lifetimes. One in ten females under the age of twenty is subjected to “forced sexual acts.” In more than thirty countries, it is not illegal for men to beat their wives. In the United States, eighty-three per cent of girls between twelve and sixteen confront sexual harassment in school. Even the earnest bureaucrats of the U.N., who tend to favor euphemism and skip over cruelties like honor killings and “corrective rape,” could not help but label the rate and the variety of mayhem regularly exacted upon half of humankind as “alarmingly high.”
The report went on to say that female political representation, while creeping higher, is still depressingly low––not least in the world’s oldest constitutional democracy, the United States. The parliaments of South Africa, Ecuador, Finland, Senegal, Sweden, Cuba, Belgium, and Rwanda are all more than forty per cent female. The percentage of members in the U.S. House of Representatives who are women is eighteen. And, since it will soon be political high season on cable TV and at the town halls and diners of Iowa and New Hampshire, it bears repeating that no woman has ever been the President of the United States.
It was hard not to think of this status report on the condition of women in the twenty-first century while Hillary Clinton stepped into the lights before an agitated crowd of reporters at the U.N. last Tuesday. A large tapestry of “Guernica” hung behind her, and she looked no happier in that setting than the tormented figures in Picasso’s image of civil war. And yet contrition was not in her plans. Instead, she chose a familiar course, offering explanations that were by turns petulant and pretzelled. Asked about the way she chose to deal with federal guidelines on e-mail when she was the Secretary of State, she said, “I opted for convenience.” Clinton’s further explanations were so familiar, such a ride in the Wayback Machine, that you had to wonder, Why do I suddenly feel twenty years younger yet thoroughly exhausted?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday said he plans to hold up attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch’s confirmation until the Senate passes a now-controversial human trafficking bill.
“This will have an impact on the timing of considering a new attorney general,” McConnell told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” “I had hoped to turn to her next week, but if we can’t finish the trafficking bill, she will be put off again.”
Democrats are now holding up the trafficking bill, which glided through the judiciary committee, after they noticed an abortion provision embedded in the bill that would prevent victims of human trafficking from using restitution funds to pay for an abortion.
“We have to finish the human trafficking bill,” McConnell said. “The Loretta Lynch nomination comes next.”
A vote on Lynch’s nomination was slated to take place this coming week, more than two weeks after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Lynch’s nomination.
Democrats have pointed out that Lynch’s nomination has been held up in the Senate longer than any U.S. attorney general nominee in three decades.
President Barack Obama nominated Lynch to lead the Justice Department in November, but Lynch’s committee hearing didn’t come until after Republicans took control of the Senate.
The No. 3 Senate Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer responded to McConnell’s threat on Sunday, calling on Republicans to “stop dragging their feet” on Lynch’s nomination.
“For months and months, Republicans have failed to move forward with her nomination using any excuse they can, except for any credible objection to her nomination itself,” Schumer said in a statement. “Loretta Lynch, and the American people, don’t deserve this. At a time when terrorists from ISIS to Al-Shabaab threaten the United States, the nominee to be attorney general deserves an up or down vote.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the judiciary committee, said McConnell’s argument that the Senate first needs to pass the trafficking bill amounts to a “hollow excuse.”
A Republican state lawmaker in West Virginia said on Thursday that while rape is horrible, it’s “beautiful” that a child could be produced in the attack.
According to Huffington Post, Charleston Gazette reporter David Gutman was on the scene when Delegate Brian Kurcaba (R) said, “Obviously rape is awful,” but “What is beautiful is the child that could come from this.”
Kurcaba made the remarks during a House of Delegates discussion of a law outlawing all abortions in the state after 20 weeks’ gestation. At 20 weeks, anti-choice activists and lawmakers allege, a fetus can feel pain and is therefore too viable to abort.
The bill was passed by West Virginia Republicans in 2014, but vetoed by Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. Now the state GOP has revived the bill and voted to remove an exception for victims of rape and incest.
This kind of mentality leads to the idea that white men can basically do what ever they want to with women and children. We are all chattel to be tossed about as they will. Remember the story of the Arkansas official that ‘rehomed’ and abused two small girls to a rapist after deciding they were possessed and too unruly? Republicans are defending him.
A pair of Arkansas Republicans have stepped up to the plate to defend an embattled state lawmaker accused of “rehoming” his adopted daughters to a rapist, using Facebook to attack the media coverage of their colleague.
On Wednesday, the Arkansas Democratic Party called upon Rep. Justin Harris (R) to resign following revelations that he and his wife made the “unilateral decision to move two of his adopted daughters into another family’s home” where one of the girls was sexually assaulted. The call for his resignation comes following a week of stories reported by the Arkansas Times, — which originally broke the story — containing interviews with Department of Children and Families staffers, previous foster parents, and baby sitters, saying Harris and his wife mistreated the two girls and have lied to the press about their dealings with the DCFS.
All of this comes right in focus with the move to tell these folks that Black Lives Matter too so that overwhelmingly white male police departments do not use deadly force every time they see a black person. It also goes with the idea of driving out immigrants and Republican politicians telling the LBGT community that any potential gay marriage will “offend them.” It’s not about any one else’s right to live their life. It’s all about the privileged white male and his right to force the rest of us to conform to his control. We are all in this struggle together.
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a potential Republican presidential candidate, is a self-described libertarian, a position that usually indicates positive feelings on LGBT rights — but Paul showed in a Friday interview that that’s not the case for him.
When Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier asked Paul about his position on same-sex marriage, the senator responded, “I’m for traditional marriage. I think marriage is between a man and a woman. Ultimately, we could have fixed this a long time ago if we just allowed contracts between adults. We didn’t have to call it marriage, which offends myself and a lot of people.”
Having some form of contract rather than state-licensed marriage would give same-sex couples “equivalency before the law” and “would have solved a lot of these problems, and it may be where we’re still headed,” Paul continued.
The degree to which these white Republican Men want to control and determine other people’s lives offends me.
This is an open thread. What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Pi Day is a holiday, not a federal one, mind you, that celebrates pi, the mathematical constant that’s calculated by dividing the circumference of a circle by its diameter.
This year, Pi Day (named for the first three numbers of the mathematical constant and first officially celebrated in 1988 in San Francisco) has special significance – at 53 seconds after 9:26 a.m. and p.m. (9:26:53), the date and the time will represent the first 10 digits of pi – 3.141592653 (some argue that 9:26:54 is a more accurate time, since the 11th digit is 5, so the 3 should be rounded up.)
So what is Pi anyway?
The concept of pi – essential in calculations ranging from classical geometry to the most advanced physics and cosmology – dates to Egyptian pyramid builders of the 26th century BC. The constant was first represented by the Greek letter in 1706.
According to the article, lots of colleges mark the day, and M.I.T. even times their acceptance letters to go out on Pi Day. And get this: Albert Einstein was born on March 14.
I’ll let a real math whiz explain why Pi is important. From The New Yorker:
Why do mathematicians care so much about pi? Is it some kind of weird circle fixation? Hardly. The beauty of pi, in part, is that it puts infinity within reach. Even young children get this. The digits of pi never end and never show a pattern. They go on forever, seemingly at random—except that they can’t possibly be random, because they embody the order inherent in a perfect circle. This tension between order and randomness is one of the most tantalizing aspects of pi.
Pi touches infinity in other ways. For example, there are astonishing formulas in which an endless procession of smaller and smaller numbers adds up to pi. One of the earliest such infinite series to be discovered says that pi equals four times the sum 1 – + – + – + ⋯. The appearance of this formula alone is cause for celebration. It connects all odd numbers to pi, thereby also linking number theory to circles and geometry. In this way, pi joins two seemingly separate mathematical universes, like a cosmic wormhole.
But there’s still more to pi. After all, other famous irrational numbers, like e (the base of natural logarithms) and the square root of two, bridge different areas of mathematics, and they, too, have never-ending, seemingly random sequences of digits.
What distinguishes pi from all other numbers is its connection to cycles. For those of us interested in the applications of mathematics to the real world, this makes pi indispensable. Whenever we think about rhythms—processes that repeat periodically, with a fixed tempo, like a pulsing heart or a planet orbiting the sun—we inevitably encounter pi. There it is in the formula for a Fourier series:
That series is an all-encompassing representation of any process, x(t), that repeats every T units of time. The building blocks of the formula are pi and the sine and cosine functions from trigonometry. Through the Fourier series, pi appears in the math that describes the gentle breathing of a baby and the circadian rhythms of sleep and wakefulness that govern our bodies. When structural engineers need to design buildings to withstand earthquakes, pi always shows up in their calculations. Pi is inescapable because cycles are the temporal cousins of circles; they are to time as circles are to space. Pi is at the heart of both.
For this reason, pi is intimately associated with waves, from the ebb and flow of the ocean’s tides to the electromagnetic waves that let us communicate wirelessly. At a deeper level, pi appears in both the statement of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and the Schrödinger wave equation, which capture the fundamental behavior of atoms and subatomic particles. In short, pi is woven into our descriptions of the innermost workings of the universe.
In 1706, William Jones – a self-taught mathematician and one of Anglesey’s most famous sons – published his seminal work, Synopsis palmariorum matheseos, roughly translated by Jonckers as A summary of achievements in mathematics.
It is a work of great historical interest because it is where the symbol π appears for the first time in scientific literature to denote the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
Jones realised that the decimal 3.141592 … never ends and that it cannot be expressed precisely. “The exact proportion between the diameter and the circumference can never be expressed in numbers,” he wrote. That was why he recognised that it needed its own symbol to represent it.
It is thought that he chose π either because it is first letter of the word for periphery (περιφέρεια) or because it is the first letter of the word for perimeter (περίμετρος). (Or because of both).
The symbol π was popularised in 1737 by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–83), but it wasn’t until as late as 1934 that the symbol was adopted universally. By now, π is instantly recognised by school pupils worldwide, but few know that its history can be traced back to a small village in the heart of Anglesey.
Read more about Jones at the Guardian link.
And now, sadly, we must move on from the sublime to the ridiculous, our pathetic corporate media and their sick obsession with Bill and Hillary Clinton.
We’re all sick and tired of being sick and tired of the media’s insane hatred of the Clintons, and Hillary isn’t even running yet. What is it that causes these pathetic excuses for reporters and editors to hate these two people so much? Under Bill Clinton the U.S. economy was strong and healthy, and times were good for the middle class.
Before Clinton, we went through eight years of “Reaganomics” that left us with huge economic problems and four years of Jimmy Carter malaise. Since then the economy has been in a shambles. Since Clinton, the economy has only been good for the ultra-rich, and we’ve been mired in two wars in the Middle East, and Republicans are trying to get us involved in a third war with Iran.
What was so terrible about peace and prosperity that the media, the GOP, and the Emoprog libertarians just couldn’t tolerate and don’t want to repeat?
If you’re thinking there a huge double standard in the media coverage of the Clintons vs. Republicans who held the same positions, you’re not imagining things. Over at Media Matters, Eric Boehlert has published a series of great pieces on this disparity.
Offering up some advice to the political press corps as it prepares to cover the 2016 presidential campaign, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni recently stressed that reporters and pundits ought to take a deep breath when big stories broke; to not immediately promote stumbles and campaign missteps to be more urgent and damaging than they really are.
“We may wish certain snags were roadblocks and certain missteps collapses, because we think they should be or they’re sexier that way,” wrote Bruni.
That was in his February 28 column. Four days later Bruni abandoned his own advice.
Pouncing on the controversy surrounding which email account Hillary Clinton used while serving as secretary of state, Bruni tossed his counsel for caution to the wind and treated the email development as an instant game changer and even wondered if the revelation indicated Clinton had a political “death wish.”
But that fits the long-running pattern of the D.C. media’s Clinton treatment: Over-eager journalists hungry for scandal can’t even abide by the advice they dispensed four days prior. Or maybe Bruni simply meant that his advice of caution was supposed to apply only to Republican candidates. Because it’s certainly not being applied to Hillary and the email kerfuffle coverage.
Instead, “The media and politicos and Twitterati immediately responded with all the measured cautious skepticism we’ve come to expect in response to any implication of a Clinton Scandal,” noted Wonkette. “That is to say, none.”
Just look how the very excitable Ron Fournier at National Journal rushed in after the email story broke and announced Clinton should probably just forget about the whole running-for-president thing. Why preemptively abandon an historic run? Because she may reveal herself to be “seedy,” “sanctimonious,” “self-important,” and “slick.” This, after Fournier denounced Bill and Hillary Clinton two weeks ago for their “stupid” and “sleazy” actions.
Why can’t these people see how ridiculously over-the-top they are when it comes to Hillary and Bill? How do they treat similar behavior by Republicans? Boehlert reported on March 10:
Even for a Republican White House that was badly stumbling through George W. Bush’s sixth year in office, the revelation on April 12, 2007 was shocking. Responding to congressional demands for emails in connection with its investigation into the partisan firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the White House announced that as many asfive million emails, covering a two-year span, had been lost.
The emails had been run through private accounts controlled by the Republican National Committee and were only supposed to be used for dealing with non-administration political campaign work to avoid violating ethics laws. Yet congressional investigators already had evidence private emails had been used for government business, including to discuss the firing of one of the U.S. attorneys. The RNC accounts were used by 22 White House staffers, including then-Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who reportedly used his RNC email for 95 percent of his communications.
As the Washington Postreported, “Under federal law, the White House is required to maintain records, including e-mails, involving presidential decision- making and deliberations.” But suddenly millions of the private RNC emails had gone missing; emails that were seen as potentially crucial evidence by Congressional investigators.
The White House email story broke on a Wednesday. Yet on that Sunday’s Meet The Press, Face The Nation, and Fox News Sunday, the topic of millions of missing White House emails did not come up. At all. (The story did get covered on ABC’s This Week.)
By comparison, not only did every network Sunday news show this week cover the story about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emails, but they were drowning in commentary. Between Meet the Press, Face The Nation, This Week, and Fox News Sunday, Clinton’s “email” or “emails” were referenced more than 100 times on the programs, according to Nexis transcripts. Talk about saturation coverage.
Indeed, the commentary for the last week truly has been relentless, with the Beltway press barely pausing to catch its breath before unloading yet another round of “analysis,” most of which provides little insight but does allow journalists to vent about the Clintons.
And what about Colin Powell? And what about announced presidential candidate Jeb Bush? Boehlert wrote on March 11:
As the press demands answers regarding which private emails Clinton handed over to the State Department and which ones she withheld because she deemed them to be personal in nature, many journalists fail to include relevant information about prominent Republicans who have engaged in similar use of private email accounts while in office, specifically former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
By omitting references to Powell and Bush and how they handled private emails while in office, the press robs news consumers of key information. It’s also material that deflates the overheated suspicions of a wide-ranging Clinton cover-up.
Appearing on ABCs This Week on Sunday, Powell was asked how he responded to the State Department request last year that all former secretaries hand over emails from their time in office. Powell confirmed that he had used private email while secretary but that he didn’t hand over any emails to the State Department because his private emails were all gone.
“I don’t have any to turn over,” he explained. “I did not keep a cache of them. I did not print them off. I do not have thousands of pages somewhere in my personal files.” Powell’s revelation is important because it puts into perspective the email protocol of a former secretary of state. By his own account, Powell’s emails, unlike Clinton’s, include his regular communications with foreign dignitaries. What was he emailing them in the lead-up to the war in Iraq? We’ll never know.
To date however, both the New York Times and the Washington Post have largely downplayed references to the fact that Powell’s private, secretary of state emails are all gone.
We simply have no “Fourth Estate” any longer. The media simply reports whatever fits their “narratives” from the 1980s and 2008 and ignores everything that doesn’t fit.
I know there is much more happening today. What Saturday reads would you recommend?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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