Sunday Reads: Full Moons, Wise Cracks and Smart Asses
Posted: February 7, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, abortion rights, Afternoon Reads, birth control, black women's reproductive health, Discrimination against women, Environment, Environmental Protection, fetus fetishists, fundamentalist Christians, open thread, Planned Parenthood, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, police brutality, poverty, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics, science, the GOP, toxic waste, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | Tags: Porter Ranch, Ted Cruz 15 Comments
According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac:
“February’s full Moon is traditionally called the Full Snow Moon because usually the heaviest snows fall in February.”
Under normal circumstances you would have to wait until February 22nd to see that Full Snow Moon in all of its bright brilliant glory.
Well…luckily for you, I have found a couple of fine examples above that is available now….for your viewing pleasure. No waiting.
Today’s theme therefore is full of moons, wisecracks and smartasses.
We will also touch on a few other nonsense news and features that you can take without reaching for the pills and cigarettes….or whatever it is that gets you through your day.
Let’s begin…
…On a serious note.
Updates on the earthquake that hit Taiwan yesterday.
Death toll rises to 34 in southern Taiwan earthquake | Society | FOCUS TAIWAN – CNA ENGLISH NEWS
Taipei, Feb. 8 (CNA) The number of people who died in a magnitude 6.4 earthquake that struck southern Taiwan early Saturday has risen to 34 as of 9:55 p.m. Sunday, according to official figures.
Rescue works has been continuing for the 121 who were believed to be trapped in a 16-story residential building in Tainan City’s Yongkang District.
The quake, centered at the Meilong district of Kaohsiung City at 03:57 a.m. Saturday, has toppled nine buildings in Tainan, injured 515 people and left 121 unaccounted.
A total of 310 have been rescued, with 100 of them rushed to hospitals for treatments.
More Than 100 Still Trapped From Taiwan Earthquake | Al Jazeera America
Dozens still trapped a day after Taiwan earthquake – CBS News
26 Dead, More Than 100 Still Trapped After Earthquake Hits Taiwan | TIME
Link to photo galleries:
Taiwan Quake – Deadly quake strikes Taiwan – Pictures – CBS News
In addition to this deadly quake, I’ve got a few other serious stories before we get to the fun. I’ll include some pictures of cracks in the earth…these are not from yesterday’s Taiwan earthquake. (Got it?)
Radioactive water leaks into groundwater at Indian Point – NY Daily News
Radioactive water overflowed into the groundwater at the upstate Indian Point nuclear power plant, officials said Saturday.
Gov. Cuomo said the plant’s operator, Entergy, reported “alarming levels” of radioactivity at three monitoring wells, with one well’s radioactivity increasing nearly 65,000%.
The Buchanan plant reported that the contamination did not migrate offsite and does not pose a threat to public health.
I don’t want to say bullshit without getting the full story….but….considering Flint, Porter Ranch, BP Gulf Spill and countless other man made environmental disasters. Cough. Cough. BULLSHIT.
If you live up in that area of NY. Be warned.
Cuomo said he was informed of the tritium-contaminated water leak Friday and asked the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Department of Health to investigate the incident.
“Our first concern is for the health and safety of the residents close to the facility and ensuring the groundwater leak does not pose a threat,” Cuomo said.
The site, roughly 35 miles north of New York City, has been under increased scrutiny from Cuomo and other officials following several incidents. In December, Cuomo ordered an investigation into Indian Point after a series of unplanned shutdowns, citing potential risks to both the city and surrounding suburbs.
Highly radioactive leak discovered at Indian Point nuclear plant – CBS News
The leak occurred after a drain overflowed during a maintenance exercise while workers were transferring water, which has high levels of radioactive contamination, said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Normally, a sump pump would take the water and filter it into another treatment system, but the pump apparently was out of service, Sheehan said. After the drain overflowed, the water seeped out of the building into the groundwater.
It was unclear how much water spilled, but samples showed the water had a radioactivity level of more than 8 million picocuries per liter, a 65,000 percent increase from the average at the plant, Cuomo said. The levels are the highest regulators have seen at Indian Point, and the normal number is about 12,300 picocuries per liter, Cuomo said.
Contaminated groundwater would likely slowly make its way to the Hudson River, Sheehan said, but research has shown that water usually ends up in the middle of the river and is so diluted that the levels of radioactivity are nearly undetectable.
“We don’t believe there’s any concern for members of the public,” Sheehan said. “First of all, this water’s not going anywhere immediately — and, again, because of the dilution factor, you wouldn’t even be able to detect it were you to take a direct sample.”
Read the rest of the snow job at the links.
BTW, update on Porter Ranch:
California Utility Faces Criminal Charges Over Ongoing Gas Leak : The Two-Way : NPR
On with other serious stories, but I can safely make some sarcastic wisecrack smartass remarks about them…and just barely feel guilty about it.
Did ya hear the one about a Chicago cop who shoots and kills this black teenager and 55 year old woman…then turns around and sues the kids estate for 10 million dollars. (Yes, I said 10 miiilllion dollars.)
Chicago cop who shot teen sues family for $10 million – NY Daily News
RACHAEL LEVY VIA VIMEO
Officer Robert Rialmo has filed a $10 million suit over a shooting that left a mentally ill teen and his unsuspecting neighbor dead.
A Chicago cop who fatally shot a mentally ill college student in December — as well as the teen’s unsuspecting neighbor — is now suing the dead teen’s family for $10 million, claiming the killings gave him “extreme emotional trauma.”
Officer Robert Rialmo filed the staggering suit Friday over his contested killing of 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier, a Northern Illinois University sophomore. The officer also accidentally killed Bettie Jones, 55, who was standing nearby, according to police.
The slain student’s family immediately slammed the suit, which comes amid the exploding scandal over deadly, racially motivated police tactics in Chicago.
“That’s a new low for the Chicago Police Department.”
No. I think the Chicago PD can go lower…anyone want to place some bets?
Rialmo shot LeGrier six times on Dec. 26 after the teen made three calls to 911, making vague but distressed remarks about an “emergency” he said needed a police response. The gunfire erupted after LeGrier rushed at the officer while swinging a baseball bat, according to police, with one shot passing through the teen and striking his neighbor.
Rialmo’s suit says LeGrier “took a full swing” with the bat at Rialmo after the officer arrived at his home, just missing the cop’s head by a few inches. After Rialmo stepped back and LeGrier refused orders to drop the bat, the teen followed the officer outside and took another swing, forcing Rialmo to act in self-defense, the suit says.
“Rialmo reasonably believed that if he did not use deadly force against LeGrier, that LeGrier would kill him,” the suit says.
The two deaths that resulted from the fatal encounter will “continue to cause…extreme emotional trauma” to the officer, according to the suit, which asks for a “sum in excess of $10,000,000” for damages.
Yeah, that full swing “missing the cop’s head by a few inches” justified the murder of two people….I can see why Rialmo would “continue to cause…extreme emotional trauma”. Best for him to go ahead and sue the family of the kid he shot in the back for the $10,0000,000. (That is a mutha load of fukken zeros.)
Rialmo’s suit contradicts the story given by LeGrier’s family in their wrongful death suit, which said the teen was inside his building and shot by the cop from the outside. The family’s suit also said LeGrier did nothing to threaten Rialmo or anyone else on the scene, and was not involved in any illegal activity at the time.
The suits come months into Chicago’s continuing crisis of police killing black men who are either unarmed or not presenting an immediate threat to officers. In many of the cases, including this one, the officer responsible for the death was white.
Protests over police tactics and alleged coverups led to the ousting of the Chicago’s top cop last year, and calls for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to step down. The most infamous case — the death of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager who was shot by a white officer 16 times — led to the city settling with the teen’s family for $5 million.
Rialmo’s attorney accused LeGrier’s family of trying to ride the wave of city actions against cops.
“Ever since the McDonald payoff, people are treating officer-involved confrontations like a lottery ticket and they’re waiting to cash it in,” Brodsky told the Tribune.
Wait a minute….who is treating this officer-involved confrontation as a lottery ticket? The murdering cop Rialmo? Or LeGrier’s family? I think that Brodsky dude has to get to Ted Cruz campaign on the double…and go to work as the campaign’s lead counsel.
This next link should make all the PLUBs happy!
Y’all know what PLUB stands for….Pro-Life-Until-Birth.
After Texas stopped funding Planned Parenthood, low-income women had more babies – LA Times
Innit a wonderful headline. More former fetuses for Republican pricks to fuck off.
…state of Texas’ sustained campaign against Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics affiliated with abortion providers appears to have led to an increase in births among low-income women who lost access to affordable and effective birth control, a new study says.
The analysis, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, documents a significant increase in births among women who had previously received birth control at clinics that no longer get state funding.
The researchers, from the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, say their findings offer a sneak peek of what may happen in other states that have cut funding to Planned Parenthood.
It is just what is coming to a state near you!
Lawmakers in Arkansas, Alabama, New Hampshire, Louisiana, North Carolina and Utah have enacted policies to keep public funds out of Planned Parenthood clinics. Ohio is expected to be the next state to follow suit.
These laws “definitely” had a real impact on women, said study leader Joseph Potter, a sociologist at the university. “It’s not like there is a large, over-capacity of highly qualified providers of effective contraception out there just waiting for people to show up,” he said.
More Medicaid Births Follow Planned Parenthood Ouster via Texas Observer
Comparing quarterly medical and pharmaceutical claims from 2011 to 2014, researchers with theTexas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP) found that 35 percent fewer patients received highly effective intrauterine devices (IUDs) and implants — known as long-acting, reversible contraception (LARC) — over the four-year period. Claims for the injectable Depo shot, which requires follow up every three months, decreased by 31 percent. Researchers found that the rate of Medicaid-covered deliveries among women in the Depo group then increased by 27 percent.
The reduction in claims, said lead author Amanda Stevenson, highlights the fact that despite recent state efforts to recruit more providers, and claims of success without Planned Parenthood, patients have lost services.
“The reproductive health safety net cannot just absorb all of the demand for highly effective contraception when you remove Planned Parenthood from the network,” Stevenson told the Observer. TxPEP’s findings, she said, “directly contradict” claims “that Planned Parenthood can be removed from federally-funded healthcare programs and other providers will just step up to pick up the slack.”
In 2011, Texas lawmakers voted to kick Planned Parenthood out of the Medicaid Women’s Health Program, which the federal government deemed a violation of federal law. Rather than support a program that denied patients the provider of their choosing, the feds yanked a $9-to-$1 match in funds at the end of 2012, and Texas dropped the women’s Medicaid program entirely. In 2013, Texas insteadlaunched the state-funded TWHP replacement program — without Planned Parenthood. Since then, state health officials and lawmakers have boasted that the new program has more than 4,000 providers, and claimed that others could easily fill the void.
The new TxPEP data suggests otherwise.
No shit.
I could do a whole post on this alone. But I move on to another story that highlights the crazy in crazy ass?
<—–That is one crazy ass if you ask me.
Anyway, check it out…Wheaton will not fire professor over Muslim worship comments, but she will leave college – The Washington Post
So the college hasn’t “fired” her…she is leaving on her own accord.
Wheaton College political science professor Larycia Hawkins has decided to part ways with the college just five days before a faculty hearing was scheduled to help decide her fate at the school, according to an email from president Philip Ryken to the campus on Saturday.
“The Administration and Dr. Hawkins have come to a place of resolution and reconciliation,” Ryken said in his email. “With a mutual desire for God’s blessing, we have decided to part ways.”
In a separate email to the faculty, Wheaton provost Stan Jones said in an email Saturday that he has withdrawn charges for firing Hawkins and asked Hawkins for forgiveness.
“I asked Dr. Hawkins for her forgiveness for the ways I contributed to the fracture of our relationship, and to the fracture of Dr. Hawkins’ relationship with the College,” he wrote.
Jones wrote that he apologized for his “lack of wisdom and collegiality” in his original contact with Hawkins, which was through another colleague, as opposed to through direct contact.
Hawkins was placed on administrative leave on Dec. 15 after she published a Facebook post suggesting that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. The statement set off a wave of controversy across the country amid larger debates about the role of Muslims in America.
Hey, what is a moon post without some space news.
Starting with an obit:
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell: A legacy of research and moon walking – CSMonitor.com
Edgar Mitchell, the first astronaut to have both a doctorate degree (an Sc.D. from MIT) and a track record as a successful test pilot, was the sixth human ever to walk on the moon.
Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell poses in front of his mission patch in an undated picture released by NASA. Mitchell, lunar module pilot on Apollo 14 and one of only 12 men to walk on the moon, passed away Thursday in West Palm Beach, Florida.
NASA/Reuters/File
NASA announced Friday that astronaut Edgar Mitchell passed away on Thursday, just one day before the 45th anniversary of his moon landing.
Dr. Mitchell was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 14, which launched in Jan. 31, 1971. He traveled to space alongside Alan Shephard and Stuart A. Roosa.
“As a member of the Apollo 14 crew, Edgar is one of only 12 men to walk on the moon,” said NASA administrator Charles Bolden in a statement, “and he helped to change how we view our place in the universe.”
In a 1997 interview for NASA’s oral history program, Mitchell said he was committed to becoming an astronaut as soon as he heard about Sputnick.
“I set my cap toward amassing qualifications that I thought would be attractive to NASA in 1957. It took nine years, but I got a doctorate, got additional flight experience, additional jet hours, was assigned to the Manned Orbiting Laboratory Program for a while, so, getting space management experience. All of that went on for nine years till I was selected in 1966….
“I’ve been devoted to that, to exploration, education, and discovery since my earliest years, and that’s what kept me going.”
Born in Texas during the Great Depression, he became an astronaut in 1966, after receiving an Sc.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1964.
Prior to his own trip to space, Mitchell worked on several Apollo projects. He was a member of the team that worked to bring Apollo 13 home after an oxygen tank explosion damaged the space craft.
There is more to read about the man at the link but I thought this was interesting:
As a researcher, Mitchell was fascinated by the idea of consciousness. During the Apollo 14 mission, Mitchell conducted his own experiments on extrasensory perception, also known as thought transference.
While the other astronauts, Shephard and Command Module pilot Stuart Roosa, were sleeping, Mitchell experimented with mind reading. He concentrated on prearranged symbols while four contacts at home attempted to guess what he was thinking about. Approximately a quarter of the guesses were correct.
The experiments changed his life. In an interview with People magazine three years later, Mitchell said, “It was euphoric, one of those rare moments in life when you seemed to be able to reach out and touch the universe, when you had an intuitive flash about the real meaning of truth.”
He also felt that Nasa was covering proof that aliens had visited earth.
More at the link.
After Death Of Edgar Mitchell, Where Are The Apollo Moon Walkers Today? : SCIENCE : Tech Times
More spacey linkage:
North Korean rocket puts object into space, angers neighbours, U.S. | Reuters
With its mirror complete, giant space telescope on track for 2018 launch | Ars Technica
NASA’s Computer Model Of The Sun’s Magnetic Fields Could Prevent Disaster : SCIENCE : Tech Times
NASA has built a moving computer model of the sun’s magnetic fields, aiming to help educate people on how magnetic fields work and show how those fields could result in a disaster.
Photo : NASA Goddard | YouTube
Video at the link.
Other science-ish links:
Rare Snow Rollers Form Across Idaho | Mental Floss
10 Spectacular Geologic Formations And Events Of Ancient Earth – Listverse
Modern Medicine Explains Why Your Desire To Punch Ted Cruz In The Face Is Completely Natural
Fucking I knew it!!!!! There had to be a reason the man makes me physically ill….with an overpowering urge to knock the shit out of him!!!!!
Germans call it Backpfeifengesicht. It’s a colloquialism which translated means “a face that needs to be hit.” However, you don’t need to be German to want to punch Ted Cruz in the face. While there hasn’t been any formal polling on the question, I personally would feel safe wagering money on it being over 50 percent of America. But what does this all mean? Are we a nation of unreasonable bullies for wanting this?
Doctor Richard Cytowic has taken some time to explain to America why they are not a nation of bad people for their burning desire to smash a knuckle sandwich into Ted Cruz’s jaw. It turns out this is all a very natural and very scientific thing we are experiencing.
While I would never actually suggest someone would do something like punch Ted Cruz in the face (I’m not suggesting they don’t either), the feeling that you want to means you are operating at a normal mental state – so just enjoy the feeling and embrace it within reason.
Dr. Cytowic explained that humans learn to read facial expressions from the day they are born. It’s one of our most rudimentary and instinctual means of communication. Our brains have had a million years of practice at reading facial expressions, generating an instant like or
dislike of the person that they are attached to. To put it more simply, it’s an evolutionary survival trait to determine friend from foe, and our brains are extremely good at it by now.
With this in mind, it explains a lot about why practically everyone hates Ted Cruz. It isn’t just his policy. There are oodles of idiot Republicans we could hate for that same reason. Ted brings out a more visceral and emotional reaction, unlike most others. Even among his fellow Republicans nobody likes him, and that says a lot.
Dr. Cytowic goes on to describe how Cruz’s facial expressions do not shift the way normal Human expression does. He has rarely observed a normal smile from Ted Cruz. In a normal smile the corners of the mouth go up, and the muscles circling the eyes contract making them narrow and forming crow’s feet at the outside corners. When it comes to Ted, his mouth just tightens into a straight line, and on the rare occasion that it deviates from this, the corners bend downward. The outside of his eyes bend downward as well, which is completely opposite of what is normal, as the eyebrows typically bend upwards.
To put it simply, Ted Cruz has a look of disgust on his face that only gets worse when he tries to look happy and smile. It’s like he is some kind of anti-politician, because you would think that someone who has his kind of fan base would naturally be able to express themselves more pleasantly. So remember, when you see Ted on TV and you want to throw something at the screen, it means you’re ok because it’s only natural.
Next up…from Cracked Magazine:
6 Modern Day Tech Advances (That Your Grandparents Had) | Cracked.com
The 5 Most Idiotic Attempts To Save A Life (That Worked) | Cracked.com
And don’t forget the Super Bowl is tonight. I don’t know, the commercials are what they used to be…
6 Terrible Super Bowl Ads You Won’t Believe Actually Ran | Cracked.com
Did you see this from last night’s SNL:
Watch SNL’s Larry David-Bernie Sanders Sketches — Vulture
Because I truly feel that Bernie is just as big of an asshole prick as Larry David…
The only one to see is this one:
Another link to assholery: The Right Celebrated Trayvon Martin’s Birthday…By Being Disgusting A-Holes (SCREENSHOTS)
And finally…some great old pictures.
Wiseguys and Tough ass punks:
Skeeters Branch Newsies: 1910 | Shorpy Historic Picture Archive
Tough Guys: 1975 | Shorpy Historic Picture Archive
And a few beauties to swoon and moon over:
We Had Faces Then — Tyrone Power, 1930′s
We Had Faces Then — James Dean, Los Angeles, 1955, photo by Roy Schatt
We Had Faces Then — Remembering silent film star Ramon Novarro on…
Remembering silent film star Ramon Novarro on his birthday (6 February 1899 – 30 October 1968)
He was a leading romantic and action star in the late 1920’s with hits such asBen-Hur,Across to Singapore (with Joan Crawford) and The Student Prince in Old Heidelburg (with Norma Shearer). I find him very effective in a speaking part as a love struck soldier in Mata Hari with Greta Garbo.
He struggled throughout his life as a gay man who was also a fervent Catholic. He refused MGM’s arrangement of a “lavender” marriage, preferring to live somewhat openly with journalist Herbert Howe. He was murdered in 1968 by two young hustlers who thought he had a lot of money. They beat him to death, and got away with just $20.
Have a great afternoon…this is an open thread.
And enjoy this slideshow of paper moons…..some images were not used in the post above.
Wednesday Make-Up: A Laugh and Two, Ending on a Sharp Note.
Posted: December 30, 2015 Filed under: 2016 elections, Accommodation and Compromise, Art, birth control, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Climate Change, energy, Environment, Environmental Protection, GLBT Rights, History, immigration, income inequality, Italy, Migrant and Refugee Crisis in Europe and Mediterranean, morning reads, open thread, Political and Editorial Cartoons, poverty, psychology, Religious Conscience, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, the GOP, The Great Recession, U.S. Politics, unemployment, Women's Healthcare | Tags: Aliso Canyon gas leak, discrimination, Natural gas leaks, Porter Ranch, Sempra Energy, SoCalGas, Ted Cruz, Wounded Knee 20 Comments
Uh, Boy!
I slacked off on Friday…with Christmas and all…there was no Friday Nite Lite thread. Well, I will make-up for it now with a comic filled post. I’ll throw some links in that you might find interesting.
12/29/2015 Cartoon by John R. Rose
Trump Cards: 12/29/2015 Cartoon by Rob Rogers
This next one is a local NC cartoon, but the same could be said for the GOP asswipes in any double red State: 12/29/2015 Cartoon by John Cole
In Louisiana and several other states: 30,000 Louisianans Scheduled to Lose Food Stamps | Al Jazeera America
Joanika Davis relies on the $194 per month she receives in food stamp benefits every month to help her get by as she searches for employment.
But on Jan. 1, Davis is set to lose that financial lifeline — one of approximately 31,000 Louisianians set to suffer as a result of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s decision to reinstate the work requirement for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in his state.
SNAP rules typically allow full benefits to single able-bodied adults only if they have jobs or are enrolled in a job-training program. Otherwise, they may access food stamp benefits for no more than three months every three years. States with high unemployment can apply for a federal waiver, dropping that work requirement and allowing single adults to access full benefits regardless of their job status.
Since the beginning of the Great Recession, nearly every state in the country sought and was granted a federal waiver at some point. But recently, a number of states with Republican governors have allowed their waivers to expire, citing improved economic circumstances and a desire to get their food stamp recipients back to work. Jindal, a Republican, allowed Louisiana’s waiver to lapse on Oct. 1.
“We continue to seek opportunities for SNAP recipients to increase their self-sufficiency. Engaging in work activities is a key step in that transition,” said Suzy Sonnier, the head of Louisiana’s Department of Children and Family Services, in a Sept. 30 statement.
Starting in January, Davis, who told Al Jazeera that she is still hunting for a job, will have to find ways to make up a monthly shortfall of nearly $200. “Why should I have to fight for food right now?” she asked. “Why should I have to fight to drink water?”
And it is not only people in Louisiana who are losing out.
Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming have recently allowed the work requirement to be reimposed, leaving 28 states with their food stamp waivers intact in fiscal year 2016.
The people affected by the reinstatement of the work requirement tend to be among the poorest of the poor, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an economic think tank. In 2014 able-bodied, childless, unemployed adults on food stamps had an average of $2,200 in gross income, the center found.
It also found that states that reimpose the work requirement tend to see a sudden sharp drop in SNAP participants, suggesting that thousands of unemployed recipients are unable to find work and maintain their eligibility.
“The idea that anybody is choosing not to work because of $190 dollars a month in food stamps — that’s really kind of a stereotype,” said Steve Spires, a senior policy analyst for the Louisiana Budget Project. “The reality is a lot of people want to work. There simply aren’t jobs…”
Clay Bennett editorial cartoon: 12/29/2015 Cartoon by Clay Bennett
On the latest Trump news: 25% of Donald Trump’s political spending goes to his own companies – Quartz
“It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it,” Donald Trump told Fortune in 2000, during his first abortive run for president.
He was referring to a $1 million motivational speaking deal he got from Tony Robbins that he timed to coincide with his campaign stops. Then, he didn’t dominate the headlines—apparently the Clinton-Bush-Gore psychodrama was more compelling—and Trump’s greatest accomplishment was winning the Reform party nomination in California with a scant 15,311 votes. (His bon mots haven’t changed much—Fortune refers to “his usual critiques of Pat Buchanan (‘a Hitler lover’), Bill Bradley (‘a total disaster’), George W. Bush (‘no Einstein’), Fidel Castro (‘a bad guy’), North Korea (‘run by some very bad people’), and Russia (‘totally mixed up’).”)
This time around, as the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, he operates on a more rarified and lucrative plane: Trump’s companies have already earned $1.4 million from his campaign.
The billionaire builder often argues that his wealth guarantees his political independence, and describes his campaign as “self-funding.” That’s no longer true: While he was the main source of campaign funds during the early part of his run, the most recent financial disclosures through the end of September 2015, show Trump put less money into his campaign than his donors—and he stands to profit in particular from their backing.
Like the article says…”Follow the money.” And read the rest at the link.
Bruce Plante Cartoon: That Drone: 12/29/2015 Cartoon by Bruce Plante
12/29/2015 Cartoon by Nick Anderson
The storms this Christmas have been terrible….The Mississippi River Is About to Have a Record Flood Completely Out of Season
The Mississippi River is flooding in a big way right now, at the wrong time of year, and is forecasted to match or break 22-year-old crest records over the next few days. Meteorologists are calling it “insane.”
Over the next three to four days, the Mississippi is predicted to reach a crest height of 49.7 feet at Chester, Illinois, one of several locations where the National Weather Service records data about the river. As of Tuesday afternoon, the river has already risen to 40.8 feet. According to Taylor Trogdon, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Memphis, that is an “absolutely remarkable” forecast.
The “great flood of 1993,” as it has come to be known, was “one of the most significant and damaging natural disasters ever to hit the United States,” according to a National Weather Service hydrologist, writing in 1996. “Damages totaled $15 billion, 50 people died, hundreds of levees failed, and thousands of people were evacuated, some for months.”
TRUMPNADO: 12/29/2015 Cartoon by Deb Milbrath
JEB RESOLUTION: 12/28/2015 Cartoon by Deb Milbrath
NAUGHTY LIST: 12/24/2015 Cartoon by Deb Milbrath
THE DONALD: 12/17/2015 Cartoon by Deb Milbrath
Cruz’s Daughters: 12/27/2015 Cartoon by Rob Rogers
A few links regarding Cruz:
Cruz supporters are just as bonkers as Trump’s: Obama ‘ruined our country, ruined Christmas’
A woman spoke to C-SPAN at a recent Cruz rally in Mechanicsville, Virginia, where she explained that she intended to vote for the Texas Republican to drive President Barack Obama, who is constitutionally prohibited from seeking a third term, from office.
“I don’t like Obama no more,” the woman explained. “He’s ruined our country, ruined Christmas. He’s let the Muslims in. We can’t say that word, we’ve got to be ashamed of it — and we’re not ashamed people. We’re a proud people, and we’re gonna take our country back. So watch out, Obama! We’re coming.”
The reporter asked the woman to explain how Obama had ruined Christmas.
“He’s scared the little children,” she said. “They’re not allowed to have Santa Claus in the schools where, you know, it might offend the Muslims. But what about us?”
The woman’s loopy rant was reminiscent of remarks made earlier this month by Trump supporter Susan DeLemus, a New Hampshire state representative, during a CNN focus group.
“We’ve got people in positions of power who I know for a fact are liars. Liars!” DeLemus said. “I watch the TV — My president comes on the TV and he lies to me! I know he’s lying. He lies all the time.”
Cruz himself is a nut:
Via Conservative Tribune. com (I won’t quote the thing cause I don’t want any crazy Cruz troll nuts here making trouble…) you can look it up by the title of the article: Ted Cruz Issues Huge Statement on What the Bible Says About Killing Muslims… This Is Brutal
Sen. Ted Cruz said that he would not be violating his Christian faith if he followed through on his vow to “carpet bomb” Islamic State group militants — a statement that’s sure to upset liberals across the country.
The Texas Republican and presidential candidate told Newsmax Wednesday: ”Let’s be clear, the Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not murder,’ which is different from ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
“Defending yourself is an obligation of any president. It is not murder,” Cruz added in the interview with Ed Berliner on “The Hard Line.”
What the fuck is that? Justified killing for “Jesus.” Sounds like what a religious zealot says after shooting and killing a bunch of innocent people at a Planned Parenthood Clinic.
But wait there is more:
Cruz pointed out that while America killed Nazis in World War II, it wasn’t murder.
“When you have the face of evil that has declared war … then it is the essence of duty to defend your nation, to defend the innocent,” he said. “When it comes to jihadists, they have declared war on us, and that’s what President Obama and Hillary Clinton refuse to acknowledge.”
The leader of the United States should fight radical Islam the same way President Ronald Reagan fought the Soviets when bringing an end to the Cold War, Cruz said. Reagan aimed his foreign policy around the notion of defeating communism — a strategy of “we win, they lose.”
Reagan “championed tax reform and regulatory reform,” Cruz said, which “unchained the American economy.” The economic growth that resulted from from his reform allowed the former president to rebuild the military and challenge Soviet communism “on every front, strategically we bankrupted the Soviet Union and won the Cold War.”
There is recorded sound from the interview at the conservative tribune link…if you must hear it. Five fucking minutes of this shit. Of course the CT (cuntservative tribune) is all hard for Cruz.
Speaking of Reagan…up next, a link sent to me from Boston Boomer: Behind the Ronald Reagan myth: “No one had ever entered the White House so grossly ill informed” – Salon.com
Reagan embarrassed himself in news conferences, Cabinet meetings. Recalling how GOP cringed at his lack of interest
I always thought Reagan was much further gone with Alzheimer’s than we’re all led on now to believe…if that makes any sense. (As I am probably in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s myself.)
For BB: The Six Most Interesting Psychology Papers of 2015 – The New Yorker
I thought many of you would find this a good read: Sudan’s midwives take on Female Genital Mutilation
And this: 15 Remarkable Women of Color Who Rocked 2015 | Colorlines
This little tidbit: 8 Crazy Cuban New Year’s Eve Traditions — My Big Fat Cuban Family: A Cuban-American Blog
My Granny would throw a bucket of water out the back door, to wash away the bad luck from the last year…I don’t remember if it was dirty water or not. Actually…I think she would toss a big pot of water. (One of her big cooking pots full…) So it would not be “dirty” and maybe that is why it never worked? She always had terrible luck…
Bruce Plante Cartoon: Bill and Hillary; Running Mates: 12/27/2015 Cartoon by Bruce Plante
12/26/2015 Cartoon by John Branch
Trump’s Flying Monkeys: 12/28/2015 Cartoon by Paul Fell
Twenty Indian students carrying valid student visas for colleges in California were denied entry in Chicago and put on planes back to India on Sunday, following other incidents of the U.S. turning away people from certain countries.
The U.S. is in a heightened state of vigilance since the terror attacks in Paris, France and San Bernardino, California. One of the shooters in San Bernardino came in on a fiance visa, prompting concern that potential terrorists could find loopholes to enter the country on valid visas or through the visa waiver program, which allows citizens of friendly countries to visit the United States without visas.
Some foreigners have already been barred from entering the country without being told why. Last week, a British Muslim family planning a trip to Disneyland was told by United Kingdom border officials that they wouldn’t be allowed to board a plane to the United States. Another 20 British Muslim families were reportedly denied entry into the United States without explanation.
12/28/2015 Cartoon by Randy Bish
Present Danger: 12/24/2015 Cartoon by Rob Rogers
Jingle Trump: 12/22/2015 Cartoon by Rob Rogers
All Purpose Hate Speech: 12/24/2015 Cartoon by Monte Wolverton
So Long to the Year of Trump: 12/24/2015 Cartoon by Sage Stossel
From Riese via AutoStraddle.com: Our Picks For 2015’s Best Longform By Women
Hey, so, maybe you’ve heard about this gender byline gap? Like how in print, men make up about 62% of bylines in the most widely circulated newspapers, and 58% of those at the top four online news sites, (according to the Women’s Media Center). Or how women head fewer major US newspapers today than they did 10 years ago and are underrepresented in op-eds, book reviews and photojournalism. Or maybe you read that article by Dayna Evans on Matter about the otherwise progressive Gawker Media’s treatment of women, which noted that if Jezebel was excluded from the company’s editorial statistics, its staff would be 28% female. (It’s 38% female with Jezebel included.) Perhaps you’re aware that racial diversity in media is even worse — people of color account for only 13.34% of journalists at daily newspapers.
I’ve been assembling weekly, and then bi-weekly, lists of the web’s best longform for Autostraddle for four years now, and because of all those reasons above (and because we love women around here), I wanted to do a year-end round-up of the best longform written by women. I qualified “longform” as containing 3,000 words or more, but there are ten or so articles I included despite falling under that word count. I wanted a racially diverse group of writers and I wanted to represent as many independent and women’s publications as possible — which was tougher than I’d hoped, as most mainstream women’s magazines and even some of the most hyped new media sites for women rarely publish articles over 2,000 words. Independent women’s publications, like ours, face serious budget constraints when it comes to commissioning longer pieces outside of personal essays. But even well-funded properties go light on women’s longform; it remains far easier to find longform by women in major men’s magazines like GQ and Esquire than their female counterparts, like Elle and Vogue. As Amanda Hess wrote in Slate following a controversy regarding a male-dominated Port Magazine feature about the future of print media, “I hope we can also take this opportunity to question why women’s writing is aligned so heavily with personal essays and service journalism — the forms that are the cheapest and ad-friendliest to produce.”
That being said, it wasn’t hard to find women writing amazing shit all over the internet. Longreadswas an incredible resource for me when putting this together, and if you don’t follow them, you really ought to. Specifically, Emily Perper does some incredible work over there. And although I remain bitter that Longform.org has yet to include our site on their app or website, I’m madly in love with their app and their website, and have been for years.
In some of the reporting pieces, men also were writers of the piece. I only selected a piece that had men involved if there were equal or more women involved.
In other news dealing with Women and GLBT’s Issues:
Hospital Refuses Pregnancy-Related Care Again Because of Religious Directives | American Civil Liberties Union Another Catholic Hospital..
Religious Universities Get Exemption to Discriminate Against LGBTQ Students, Faculty
Forty-three religious universities applied for waivers in 2015 that will allow them to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Department of Education approved twenty-two of those requests, and the rest remain pending,BuzzFeed reported.
The number of schools seeking these waivers has spiked in recent years, jumping from one school in 2012 to 43 this year, according to a new report from the Human Rights Campaign.
Another story not getting much notice: Manning: Healing Continues 125 Years After Wounded Knee Massacre – ICTMN.com
This year marks the 125thanniversary of the Wounded Knee massacre. On December 29, 1890, as many as 300 innocent and unarmed Lakota men, women, children, infants, and elders were gunned down by the United States 7thCavalry at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. After the bloodshed, Chief Big Foot (Spotted Elk) and his band lie dead in the snow where they remained frozen for three days, until all were buried in a mass grave.
For decades, the Wounded Knee massacre was masqueraded as a battle, and marked in many American history books as such. A few months following the massacre, the United States government awarded 20 troops of the U.S. 7thCavalry with the Medal of Honor, and to this day, those medals have yet to be rescinded.
12/24/2015 Cartoon by Chan Lowe
12/23/2015 Cartoon by Chan Lowe
12/24/2015 Cartoon by John Cole
12/24/2015 Cartoon by Tim Eagan
Now some other links…Science, History and Art, oh…and a huge ass natural gas leak in California:
Training The Immune System To Fight Cancer Has 19th-Century Roots : Shots – Health News : NPR
Ancient DNA sheds light on Irish origins – BBC News
Genetic Study Traces the Origins of the Irish – Archaeology Magazine
Fishermen Report Medieval Shipwreck Off Italy’s Southern Coast – Archaeology Magazine
We Ask Some Art World Luminaries to Pick the Best & Worst of 2015
Here’s what the English language sounded like 500 years ago
“Unstoppable” California gas leak being called worst catastrophe since BP spill
Gas is escaping through a ruptured pipe more than 8,000 feet underground, and it shows no signs of stopping,” as according to the California Air Resources Board, methane – a greenhouse gas 72 times more impactful in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide – has been escaping from the Aliso Canyon site with force equivalent “to a volcanic eruption” for about two months now.
New infrared footage exposes the massive leak…
Go to link to see that video…also looks like Erin Brockovich is working on this…
Infographic of leak (and potential solution)
As TheAntiMedia.org’s Claire Bernish details, methane gas continues spewing, unchecked, into the air over southern California from a fractured well to an underground storage site — at such an alarming rate that low-flying planes have necessarily been diverted by the FAA, lest internal combustion engines meet highly volatile gas and, well, blow the entire area to hell.
This is, indeed, the biggest environmental catastrophe since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010; and for now, there is no way to stop it.
This methane disaster is worse than can be sufficiently described in words, because while it’s estimated well over 100,000 pounds of methane spew into the atmosphere every hour, the leak can’t be halted, at least until spring. Even then, that stoppage depends entirely on the efficacy of a proposed fix — which remains a dubiously open question.
Yeah, I am ending it on that disturbing note. There is plenty more at the link…it is a very long read. (I will say it is via a website called intellihub.com. I am not familiar with that site, however…they do quote from reliable sources i.e. LATimes, CBS News, NY Daily News, court documents etc., which you can also verify by clicking those links within the article itself.) In fact I would also suggest you read the comments…it may lead you to research into more natural gas leaks you can look up on Google…some fun for ya on the crust of the shitty year “2015” as we head over the cusp of the new year “2016.”
12/28/2015 Cartoon by Ann Cleaves
That does it for this Wednesday’s post…y’all enjoy this last couple of days of 2015!
What is going on in your part of the world? This is an open thread…
Sunday Reads: “Passing prejudice off as faith” and other thoughts from the “internets” and shi…stuff.
Posted: November 29, 2015 Filed under: 2016 elections, abortion rights, Africa, American Gun Fetish, Austerity, Discrimination against women, Domestic terrorism, fetus fetishists, Foreign Affairs, fundamentalist Christians, GLBT Rights, Hillary Clinton, History, Human Rights, hunger, Migrant and Refugee Crisis in Europe and Mediterranean, morning reads, Planned Parenthood, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, poverty, Rape Culture, Real Life Horror, Refugees, religious extremists, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics, right wing hate grouups, Syria, the GOP, The Right Wing, Turkey, Violence against women, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | Tags: colorado springs planned parenthood, EU/Turkey Refugee Agreement, vikings and muslim arabs trade during the middle ages 8 Comments
Good Morning
Hey….
Since When Did Scapegoating and Taking Revenge Become American and Christian Principles?
I know I am beating a dead horse here, albeit a corn-fed…free-range horse at that…but this piece from David Mochel at HuffPo is coming from the direction I have been speaking of the past few weeks.
I do not consider myself religious in any traditional sense, nor would I say that I am deeply patriotic, but I am tired of “American” and “Christian” being used as descriptors of what is happening in the popular discourse.
I am tired of letting the loudest among us be those who call for un-American behavior in the name of patriotism. I am tired of letting the dialogue be monopolized by those who pass off prejudice as faith. Compassion matters. Dignity matters. Exercising self-discipline when we are scared and angry matters.
Human beings are biological creatures with lots of biological impulses. But we also have the capacity to see beyond our temporary urges for violence and oppression. We have the ability to anchor ourselves in, and act out of, enduring and inspiring principles. If we do not use the wisdom we have access to, then what exactly makes us human?
This feels like a moment in time when we are collectively trying to decide how to move forward. In the face of terrorist attacks, racial tension and conflicting world views, where shall we go for guidance? Shall we just go with what we feel and call it what we want? Shall we lash out and call it Christian? Shall we segregate and call it American? Or shall we consult some principles that were written down precisely so that we would remember them in times such as these?
The second paragraph of the Declaration of the Independence begins with these words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The Constitution of the United States begins with these words:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity
A plaque mounted on the base of the Statue of Liberty carries these lines from a poem by Emma Lazarus:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Every morning my son stands up in his public high school classroom and recites The Pledge of Allegiance, which ends with the words: “with liberty and justice for all.”
He also goes on to quote from the prayer of St. Francis and New Testament, only to ask…
What am I missing? Where is written that we should block access, imprison, blame and malign those who we do not understand, who look different, or who live outside our borders? Does being American or Christian represent any fundamental principles or are these nothing more than titles that we get simply by living in this country and going to a fancy building on Sunday?
I propose that these words which are thrown around quite a lot lately actually do stand for something. I propose that the privileges of living in this country come with the responsibilities of being inclusive, of speaking for those without a voice and representing the rights of those who are denied access. I propose that the privileges of being Christian come with the responsibilities of showing compassion and generosity for those in need and mercy toward those who have offended.
Uncertainty can trigger anxiety and self-defensiveness. We can respond by being reactionary, rigid, and exclusive. But this is not our only choice. We also have the choice of compassion, inclusivity, and peaceful resistance.
Of course, it is challenging to make this choice in the face of senseless violence and vehement disagreement. Standing for something worthwhile is rarely easy.
No it isn’t easy, and to quote someone who seems a bit strange to quote in this discussion…as “Dubya” said so often, “It’s hard work!”
I will get to the Planned Parenthood Shooting in a few moments, but in response to the link above, remember, these people are fleeing…the murder and terror. They are refugees. Six children drown as refugee boats sink off Turkey – Al Jazeera English
More than 4,700 people arrived on the Greek islands on average each day in November [AP Photo/Santi Palacios]
At least six children have drowned in two separate incidents when boats carrying refugees to Greece sank off Turkey’s coast, Turkish state media has said.
A vessel carrying 55 Syrians and Afghans capsized due to bad weather off the town of Ayvacik, a main crossing point for refugees trying to reach the Greek island of Lesbos, the Anatolia news agency reported on Friday.
Turkish coastguards have so far recovered the bodies of four Afghan children, it added.
Two more children, two sisters aged four and one, drowned early on Friday when their wooden boat carrying some 20 people to the island of Kos sank because of heavy rains and stormy weather, the agency said.
Turkey, which is hosting 2.2 million refugees from the conflict in neighbouring Syria, has become the main transit point for people fleeing war.
The European Union and Turkey have agreed in principle to a refugee action plan, which is expected to be finalised at a summit on Sunday.
![More than 4,700 people arrived on the Greek islands on average each day in November [AP Photo/Santi Palacios]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2015/11/27/da9b6f77e3dc40f6a9a45cbf09ae249f_18.jpg)
I will put up some links in the comments on the details of this summit, but take a look at that link for a little info on it, there is also more discussion here:
EU, Turkey driving hard bargain before migration summit | Reuters
Our View: Cyprus will not be able to call the shots in Brussels – Cyprus Mail Cyprus Mail
And two links from Irish Times:
EU-Turkey summit aims to tackle refugee crisis
Give Me a Crash Course In . . . Turkish-Russian-Syrian relations
For a video look into the refugee experience via Al Jazeera English: Why on earth would anyone do this?
Follow the journeys of three refugees who are risking everything in hopes of reaching Europe.
That title alone is sufficient enough to give you a picture of what the video is about.
Meanwhile back in the United States:
The question of Life is back in the news…
I think it must be said again:
Life begins at arousal!!!!
And to hell with fluoridation in water systems!
Who needs the “guvment” anyway?
As of Saturday evening: 2016 Republican Contenders Silent On Planned Parenthood Shooting
Republican presidential hopefuls were noticeably silent about a fatal shooting that took place at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs.
All three of their Democratic counterparts tweeted in support of the organization during and after Friday’s attack, which left three people dead and nine others injured.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was the only one of the major GOP candidates to comment:
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul instead tweeted about his own Black Friday sales:
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush published an opinion piece about Obama’s foreign policy:
Donald Trump spent the evening (and Saturday morning) touting upcoming campaign eventsand complaining about a New York Times reporter.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted about his campaign’s new cold-weather gear:
Ben Carson was off Twitter and in Jordan visiting a refugee camp.
All of the major 2016 Republican hopefuls describe themselves as anti-abortion. Some, like Paul, Rubio and Cruz, have attempted to strip federal funding for Planned Parenthood, citing heavily edited videos that emerged earlier this year claiming to show the nonprofit’s employees selling fetal tissue for profit. A congressional inquiry into the videos did not find any evidence of wrongdoing.
Earlier this year, Rubio wondered why more Americans don’t get “fired up” about Planned Parenthood’s “dead babies.”
Ted Cruz breaks silence on ‘horrific’ Planned Parenthood attack | US news | The Guardian
Speaking in Lamoni, Iowa, Cruz said that while the motives behind Friday’s attack were not clear “it was unacceptable, horrific and wrong”.
“We know that police officers and civilians have been targeted and lost their lives and our prayers are right now are with the families,” Cruz said.
Many of the party’s candidates have come out strongly against Planned Parenthood on the campaign trail as they seek to secure conservative votes.
No More Mister Nice Blog: REPUBLICANS HATE WHAT THEY HATE MUCH MORE THAN THEY LOVE WHAT THEY LOVE
Republican presidential candidates still haven’t said anything about the Colorado Planned Parenthood shootings, with the exception of Ted Cruz (in a tweet, as I noted in my last post) and now John Kasich:
Ohio Gov. John Kasich is the other GOP contender to discuss the attacks, offering his prayers for the affected families and saying “senseless violence has brought tragedy to Colorado Springs.”
This seems odd:
Republicans hate abortion and hate Planned Parenthood. They hate gun control, and
the shooting has already led to another call for new gun laws by President Obama. These hatreds are much more important to the right than love of the police, even when the dead police officer was also a Christian minister. In this case, blue lives don’t matter, and this wasn’t part of the war on Christianity. The killer wasn’t a member of any group conservatives hate, and his main target was a group conservatives absolutely hate.
So hate wins. Therefore, the right is never going to denounce this incident with any enthusiasm.
The Democrats did tweet there thoughts: 2016 Democrats React To Planned Parenthood Shooting
As usual, Hillary is on top of it…check out the time of her post.
I wonder…what was tweeted after the news of this: Man Kills Waffle House Worker Over Smoking Ban, Cops Say
Johnny Max Mount, 45, was allegedly smoking in a Biloxi Waffle House when the 52-year-old employee asked him to put it out, according to the Sun Herald. Mount is accused of refusing and instead removing a 9mm handgun hidden under his shirt, WMC reports. Police allege he shot the woman, who has not yet been identified, once in the head early Friday morning. She was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Mount was arrested for first degree murder, and is in jail on 2 million bond.
Back to the Planned Parenthood Shooting:
Siege highlights security used in abortion clinics | Tampa Bay Times
‘No More Baby Parts’: Shooter’s Words Prove Right-Wing Rhetoric Incited PP Attack « Addicting Info
Investigators: Shooter ‘politically motivated’ – Business Insider
Colorado shooting suspect said ‘no more baby parts’: reports | Reuters
TBogg at Raw Story: Domestic terrorism and the evil that men do
at happened at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood on the Friday after Thanksgiving was inevitable. After the deceptively-named Center for Medical Progress released the equally deceptively-edited videos accusing Planned Parenthood of profiting from the sale of fetal parts, someone had to die in the end.
Of all the phony attacks and accusations made against Planned Parenthood by a new generation of anti-choice activists like James O’ Keefe and Lila Grace Rose, the videos created by former O’Keefe confederate David Daleiden raised the bar — or lowered it depending on how you view them — on over the top accusations intended to fire up Christian conservatives and embolden lawmakers to do all they can to destroy Planned Parenthood.
Images of fetal tissue being sorted by technicians became a bloody flag to be waved by people who seem to believe that medical procedures are magically free of the kind of things most people are unfamiliar with because they’re not medical professionals who are undeterred by the sight of body fluids, viscera and bones. Those who view abortions as a repellent medical procedure became even more appalled by seeing people who deal with such matters on a daily basis act like … people who deal with such matters on a daily basis.
Where Daleiden really hit one out of the park for the anti-choice crowd was when he accused Planned Parenthood of selling fetal tissue — used by researchers looking for cures for Alzheimer’s, among other things — and making a profit off of it.
Which turned out to be a lie.
[…]
On a certain level — with the aid of the media which uncritically ran with his narrative — Daleiden was more than modestly successful. Republican lawmakers in conservative states were able to cut some funding for Planned Parenthood, while GOP presidential candidates had yet something else to grandstand about in order to woo the evangelical base.
With so much heat thrown off by Daleiden’s anti-abortion project, it is no surprise — and it absolutely cannot be to him — that someone somewhere would take his lies to the extreme and try and do something about it. With extreme prejudice.
According to NBC, Robert Lewis Dear — who killed three people including a cop,making him a hero to these “pro-life” folks while shooting up a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood — reportedly told investigators “no more baby parts” after he was arrested.
As they say: Who could have predicted that?
There is nothing anyone here can say, we all saw this shit coming.
To all appearances, Dear appears to be either mentally unstable or an anti-social kook who, despite a history of run-ins with the law including domestic violence, was able to easily obtain a gun or guns. For that you can thank the NRA later.
There is no indication that Dear was or is religious, but a predisposition to being either anti-choice or anti-woman certainly was a factor.
Unlike Scott Roeder, who murdered Dr. George Tiller in a Wichita church, one needn’t act as the hand of God taking holy vengeance to “save the children.” You just need a motive –imagined or not — to pull the trigger.
So it appears that Robert Lewis Dear shot up a Planned Parenthood because he was familiar with David Daleiden’s videotape lies. This is not to say that this is something that Daleiden was hoping for. But when Daleiden published his videos with great fanfare, he primed more than a few future domestic terrorists to take the law — God’s or their own — into their own hands.
David Dalieden didn’t pull the trigger — he just showed Robert Lewis Dear where he needed to aim the gun.
Robert Dear, Suspect in Colorado Killings, ‘Preferred to Be Left Alone’ – The New York Times
Robert L. Dear Jr. was a man who lived off the grid.
On this lonely, snow-covered patch of land in a hamlet ringed by the Rocky Mountains, his home was a white trailer, with a forest-green four-wheeler by the front door and a modest black cross painted on one end.
As police officers surrounded it on Saturday, looking for clues to what they said had sent its owner on a rampage at a Planned Parenthood center that left three dead and nine wounded, neighbors said they barely knew him, beyond one man’s memory of his handing out anti-Obama political pamphlets.
Van Wands, 58, whose wife owns a local saloon, said there were two types of people in the area: the old-timers who put in time getting to know their neighbors, and newcomers who wished to be left alone. Mr. Dear, he said, fell solidly into the second category.
That article has lots of background on Dear…
In Black Mountain, N.C., Mr. Dear had lived in a small yellow house reachable only after miles of driving on mountain roads and, ultimately, along an unpaved and winding street. Two sticks, forming a cross, were attached to a padlocked shed that was filled with bedding, gas canisters and worn boxes of beer. He bought it without running water.
More at the link.
As Dak said yesterday in the comment section of Boston Boomer’s post:
Colorado Springs, Site Of Planned Parenthood Attack, Is A Hub For Conservative Christians
Cannonfire-A brief discourse on faulty logic — or: Meet the Fukers!
The right-wing media has spent years demonizing Planned Parenthood, one of the most useful and virtuous institutions in this country. A white maniac from a Deep Red state shoots up a Planned Parenthood clinic, and what happens? The right-wing press instantly politicizes the situation, while simultaneously accusing the left of politicizing.
During Shooting, GOP Congressman Says He Expects Apology From Planned Parenthood | Mediaite
It was while that siege was still going on, though, that Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger decided to take to CNN’s air and demand an apology from Vicki Cowart, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains, if the perpetrator turned out not to be an anti-abortion terrorist:
“When I heard that statement, I thought that was very premature. We may find out this person was targeting Planned Parenthood. If we find out he was not targeting Planned Parenthood, I would fully expect an apology from the Planned Parenthood director for saying that.”
That was at about 6 pm, while there was still gunfire being reported at the scene. There is a long history of terrorism against Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health providers in this country, but the statement Kinzinger is referencing actually points out that the motive is as yet unknown, and yet is still true no matter what this shooter’s mysterious motive turns out to be. Here’sthat statement in full:
Statement from Vicki Cowart, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains:
“Our top priority is the safety of our patients and staff. Our hearts go out to everyone involved in this tragic situation. Planned Parenthood has strong security measures in place, works closely with law enforcement agencies, and has a very strong safety record. We don’t yet know the full circumstances and motives behind this criminal action, and we don’t yet know if Planned Parenthood was in fact the target of this attack. We share the concerns of many Americans that extremists are creating a poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism in this country. We will never back away from providing care in a safe, supportive environment that millions of people rely on and trust.”
As with every tragedy, there will be lots of virtual ink devoted to chronicling the many stupid, crass, offensive things that people did and said as this tragedy was unfolding, but this one deserves a special mention, and here’s why.
Kinzinger, a “pro-life” Republican, has demanded an apology from Planned Parenthood if it turns outthat the women’s health organization was not the target of this apparent terrorist murderer. Therefore, if by some magical confluence of events it turns out that Planned Parenthood was the target, then Planned Parenthood does not owe Kinzinger an apology. Kinzinger has conditionally accepted the blame for this violence on behalf of the unhinged anti-abortion right. If he’s allowed back on CNN after that, it should be to ask him if he’s ready to apologize to Planned Parenthood.
The response: GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger Gets Shredded On Facebook After Planned Parenthood Shooting Comments (IMAGES) «
This past week, my cousin David visited us…he meets with the head Bishop of the Florida Archdiocese tomorrow…and finds out in January if he has been accepted into the seminary to become a priest. He mentioned the Pope calling this mess of a world…World War III in “piecemeal”.
Take a look at these:
Pope Francis warns on ‘piecemeal World War III’ – BBC News – 13 September 2014
Pope Francis warns ‘piecemeal’ World War III has begun-NBC.news- Saturday, 13 Sep 2014 | 7:06 AM ET
Because according to CNN: How is this not World War III? – CNN.com-Updated 3:16 PM ET, Wed November 25, 2015
…it’s getting hard to avoid analogies to World War I — strange bedfellows, conflicting agendas, alliances of convenience
Remember this…because in a related op/ed on CNN: No, it’s not ‘World War 3’ – CNN.com-Updated 9:03 AM ET, Tue November 17, 2015
Note the dates on those links.
Okay, this is getting long, even for a Sunday Reads. So the rest of the links are in Dump Fashion.
Ben Carson, visiting Syrian refugees in Jordan, says he ‘saw pain on faces’ – LA Times
Mom Refuses To Let A Gay Man Teach Her Kids – His Response Is LEGENDARY (IMAGE) «
Burger King manager says police erased video of Chicago shooting | Tampa Bay Times
Russian lawmaker killed by husband detonating hand grenade – NY Daily News
The jealous husband of a young Russian lawmaker killed himself and his wife after detonating a hand grenade as he forced her to have sex in the backseat of their car Thursday, according to local reports.
Dammit, that is, ugh…no words, but there are some assholes out there think there is no way to force sex when you are married to the woman. I wonder what that person feels about hand grenade murder/suicide? (Although I am sure because the woman was very modern and working as a law maker…he would find some way to justify it…to far? Possibly.)
But let’s move on to the poor, another one of said asshole’s champions: It’s simply harder to eat well when you are poor | Barbara Ellen | Comment is free | The Guardian
You can read about the austerity factor at the link.
And we will end it with history:
From Raiders to Traders: The Viking-Arab Trade Exchange
The Viking raids across Europe brought them into contact with other cultures, including Muslim Arabs. Although there are no known Viking settlements in the Arab lands, both cultures interacted with each other through their respective exploration of Europe. Contact between Vikings and Arabs occurred mainly in the area of what would become Russia. While there is scarce evidence that Arabs visited the homelands of the Vikings, or as they called them, the “people of the North,” artifacts found across Scandinavia, and especially in Sweden, point to an extensive long-distance trade exchange between the two very different cultures. It was the promise of access to much needed and coveted silver that set off the Viking exploration into Europe, and brought Viking raiders into contact with the Arabs. In their quest for silver, the Vikings discovered and accessed valuable trade routes to Constantinople that led to an extensive trade exchange with the Arab world. Seizing upon the opportunity to enrich themselves, the Vikings came into contact with Arabic wealth and treasures through their raids, and soon realized the potential of a peaceful trade exchange.
The Vikings came into contact with Muslim Arabs during their exploration of the Iberian Peninsula. One of the first contacts occurred with Muslim Spain in 844 when a Viking fleet of fifty-four ships sailed from their base in Brittany to Spain in order to raid the Caliphate’s treasures. The raiding campaign was successful, as the Vikings conquered Lisbon and Seville, destroyed numerous other towns, and even threatened the capital of al-Andalus, Córdoba. However, the Muslims were able to drive back the Viking invaders and built “an effective coastal defence against new attacks.” Having seen the riches of the Caliphate, the Vikings were determined to return, and embarked on a second raiding campaign in 859, this time with a much bigger fleet of sixty-two ships. Again, the raiding campaign itself was a success, as their ships were “so fully laden with plunder that they sat low in the water.”
However, on the Vikings’ journey back to their home base in Brittany, the Muslim naval fleet attacked and destroyed the majority of the Vikings’ ships. With that, Viking exploration of and interaction with Muslim Spain ended. The two raids gave both cultures a first glimpse at each other’s military capabilities and characteristics. Prior to the Vikings’ invasion of the Caliphate, the Arabs had no interaction with the “people of the North.” To the Muslim Arabs, the Vikings appeared “as a sudden, mysterious, military threat.” The Vikings for the first time were confronted with an enemy that was well organized on land as well as on the sea, where Vikings were used to supremacy.
Well, what are you all up to today? I will post those updates on the EU/Turkey Refugee Agreement below as they become available.
Refugee images from Pinterest: J.J. Lopez Minkoff on Pinterest
Otherwise, please post some of your thoughts today.
Wednesday Reads: It is good cape weather.
Posted: October 28, 2015 Filed under: 2016 elections, A My Pet Goat Moment, Austerity, child sexual abuse, Congress, corruption, Democratic Politics, Fox News, fundamentalist Christians, George W. Bush, health, Hillary Clinton, House of Representatives, income inequality, misogyny, morning reads, police brutality, poverty, Psychopaths in charge, Real Life Horror, religious extremists, Republican politics, sports, the GOP, The Great Hunger, The Right Wing, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Violence against women, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | Tags: Paul Ryan 31 Comments
Good Early Afternoon
I found that image on Facebook. I got the idea for the capes from a friend of mine who is doing a pimp thing for Halloween…at least I think that was the look he was going for. Anyway, he said he thought capes were cool and that they should come back into style. Which made me think of the Seinfeld episode…about the man in the cape.
Yeah it is good cape weather, don’t ya think?
Anyway, here are the other quick scenes that go with this episode:
Then of course I got sucked into the youtube vortex and found this nugget of clips. The best of Frank:
Tell that to Bobby Colby….all that kid wanted to do was go home…well he went home alright….with a crater in his colon the size of a cutlet.
Alright then, enough of the fun stuff. Let’s get down to the shitty gritty.
As you read these articles remember this:
The numbers are staggering: US is ‘world leader’ in child poverty
That is from back in April of this year…Don’t forget the mortality rate in newborns either:
U.S. infant mortality rate worse than other countries – CBS News
That link is from a year ago…
The point I am trying to make is, there is a GOP debate tonight…cough, cough…
What’s at stake for tonight’s GOP debate?
I doubt very seriously the candidates will be asked pointed questions about their party’s compliance and cause of the figures above. But what the fuck right? As long as this shit continues:
That is Digby at Salon.
Not sure you saw this…but I think it may have been posted earlier in the week here on the blog…anyway, back to the shit talking from Slate, Monday this week:
Joe Cannon: Cannonfire
I have to quote the whole post, sorry Joseph…but if I were to write my own response to that shit William Saletan said, it would sound like a Samuel L Jackson monologue. (Which is not to say I haven’t done anything like that before on the blog, but with my dysfunctional brain at the moment…I don’t think I can give my rant the kind of linguistic attention it deserves…)
The turning of the worm, the eating of the crow (redux)
Attention, irony fans! Dig:
Clinton is framing Sanders as a sexist who accuses women of shouting when they try to speak up. It’s a lie. She’s manipulating women and abusing feminist anger for her own advantage.
It’s great that we’re more aware of bigotry than we used to be. But we should also beware false claims of bigotry: the race card, the sex card, the homophobia card. In 1991, Clarence Thomas, a well-connected federal judge, evaded sexual harassment allegations and won confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court by accusing his interrogators of a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.” Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, says anyone who advocates a boycott of his country “should be treated exactly as we treat any anti-Semite or bigot.” Sexism, racism, and anti-Semitism are real. But sometimes they’re fabricated.
For more from that Slate shit, we go back to the William Saletan article:That’s what Clinton is doing. She’s misrepresenting an exchange that took place at the Oct. 13 Democratic presidential debate. During the exchange, Clinton accused Sanders of voting with the gun lobby. Sanders replied: “All the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want, and that is keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have those guns and end this horrible violence.” Sanders argued that people on both sides of the gun debate should agree to “strengthen and expand instant background checks, do away with this gun show loophole,” “deal with the straw-man purchasing issue,” and “address the issue of mental health.”
The man standing to Clinton’s left during this exchange, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, joined in the attack on Sanders. To this, the Vermont senator answered with the same message: “Here is the point, governor. We can raise our voices. But I come from a rural state, and the views on gun control in rural states are different than in urban states, whether we like it or not. Our job is to bring people together around strong, common-sense gun legislation.”
Two days after the debate, Clinton brought up the exchange during a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in San Antonio. She promised to stand up to the gun lobby and, dropping her G’s, added: “I’ve been told by some to quit talkin’ about this, to quit shoutin’ about this. Well, I’ll tell you right now, I will not be silenced, and we will not be silenced.” The crowd loved it. The next day in New Hampshire, Clinton tried the same line in a Yankee-friendly accent: “Some people say that we shouldn’t talk about it. Some say we shouldn’t shout about it, that I shouldn’t shout about it. Well, I think we have to keep talking. But more importantly, we have to act.”
A week went by. Clinton prepared for her Oct. 22 testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. When she returned to the campaign trail on Oct. 23, in a speech to the Democratic National Committee Women’s Leadership Forum, her account of the exchange with Sanders was no longer just about guns. It was about sexism. “You know,” she began—clearing her throat to signal the sound bite ahead—“I’ve been told to stop, and I quote, ‘shouting’ about gun violence. Well, first of all, I’m not shouting. It’s just [that] when women talk, some people think we’re shouting.” The audience hooted, screamed, and cheered. Clinton grinned. “I will not be silenced, because we will not be silenced,” she declared.
It goes on that the Clinton campaign then proceeded to adopt a new catch-phrase/slogan: “When women talk, some people think we’re shouting”…Maybe the “shouting should be changed to “shrill?”Again from the Slate piece,
On social media, Clinton’s campaign made the new line—“When women talk, some people think we’re shouting”— her message of the day. Her team posted it on her Twitter feed at 8:30 Friday morning, two hours before her speech to the DNC forum, as a rebuke to “those who tell her to ‘stop shouting’ on issues that matter.”
The quote also went up on her Facebook page and her campaign website, under the headline, “Hillary Clinton Just Said Something Women Have Been Thinking for Years.” The next day, at a Democratic dinner in Iowa, Clinton repeated the applause line: “I’ve been told to stop shouting about ending gun violence. Well, I haven’t been shouting. But sometimes, when a woman speaks out, some people think it’s shouting. But I won’t be silenced, and I hope you won’t be either.”
Clinton doesn’t use Sanders’ name when she tells this story. She doesn’t have to: Everyone who saw the debate or heard about it knows she’s talking about him. She’s using the story to bond with women, to paint Sanders as a patronizing old fart, and to portray herself as a victim.
Let’s be clear: This isn’t what happened. During the debate exchange, Sanders answered O’Malley with the same point about “raising our voices.” Sanders has been giving this answer for years. He did it in July, after an O’Malley super PAC ad attacked him (“We have been yelling and screaming at each other about guns for decades,” said Sanders). He did it again in August, after a male surrogate for Clinton attacked him (“I can get beyond the noise and all of these arguments and people shouting at each other”). He did it again in October, after the mass shooting in Roseburg, Oregon (“People on both sides of this issue cannot simply continue shouting at each other”). Sanders gives this answer to everyone.
The charitable explanation of Clinton’s behavior is that she sincerely perceived Sanders’ rebuke during the debate as sexist. But if that were true, you’d expect her to have said so in her first accounts of the exchange. She didn’t. She waited more than a week before embellishing the story. She prepared it as a sound bite for social media, and she unveiled it at a women’s forum. And it worked, so she’s still using it.
Enough. Sanders’ record as a feminist is as good as Clinton’s. No honest reading of his career or his comments about guns can construe him as a sexist. Clinton is trying to connect with women who have felt bullied by men, and to turn them against Sanders, by smearing him. And what’s true of racism and anti-Semitism is just as true of sexism: The more seriously you take the real thing, the more you should revile people who use it as a fraud.
Uh, Fuck You William Saletan.
Okay, back now to Joseph. Like I said above, my response would not be so coherent.
My (sic Cannon’s) response: 2008.
Remember?
Remember when anyone who called Obama a progressive poseur was considered an unhooded Klansman?
Remember when I was called a “racist” every minute of every hour of every day for weeks simply because I pointed out that Obama had lied about his opposition to NAFTA?
Remember when I was considered kin to George Wallace simply because I dared to mention the easily-proved fact that Obama did not denounce the Iraq invasion during his 2004 convention speech (or at any other time during his senate campaign)?
Remember the death threats against Hillary published on Democratic web sites like Daily Kos?
Remember how every sentence, word and phoneme uttered by the Clintons was hyper-parsed and subjected to bizarre interpretations in order to prove that they hated all black people? (As if anyone could withstand that kind of attack. Using the same smarmy tactic, I could prove that you are a racist, whoever you might be.)
Remember that shit?
I’ll never forget.
I’ll never forget either…those smarmy muthafuckaz. On that note. Something funny, because some of the other links are really depressing.
Oh my gawd…Dubya is Ricky Bobby!
Christian marriage adviser: Use ‘fear and dread’ to control your wife — as God intended
Responding to comments from a men’s rights activist on a posting about finding enjoyment in sex with a wife who grudgingly agrees, the host of a website providing tips on proper Biblical “gender roles” agreed that keeping a woman in a constant state of fear is an appropriate way to control her actions.
Pointing to a column he wrote on “Female dread,” Rollo Tomassi explained that Christian men go about seeking sex with women all wrong by trying to “diffuse sexual anxiety and tension.” Instead, Tomassi said husbands should make their wives “unintentionally uncomfortable” in order to achieve “the rough, hard-core, make-up sex you never thought you’d have.”
Larry Solomon of Biblical Gender Roles agreed enthusiastically — albeit from a biblical perspective — writing: “So should a wife Biblically speaking have a little healthy fear or dread of her husband? Absolutely!”
According to Solomon — who agreed with Tomassi’s distaste for feminism — the Bible says that women should submit to their husbands “’as unto the Lord’ (Ephesians 5:22)”
Solomon lamented the fact that he believes that most Christian husbands fear their wives.
“Men show their wives they are either afraid to lose them (be alone) or afraid of the prospect of divorce and the financial or child custody repercussions that it may bring, ” he wrote.
Solomon suggested that Christian husbands should use what he calls the “there’s the door” method.
“So when a woman acts out in rebellion toward her husband and tries to act as if she does not need her husband or that other men would treat her better the Christian husband should tell his wife “there’s the door”. Will some women be foolish enough to walk out that door? Yes, ” he wrote. ” But the moment a man allows his wife to put him in a position of fearing her, rather than her fearing him the relationship has just changed from the design God intended it to be.”
Solomon added that there is a limit to what a husband needs to provide for his wife and that the minimums should be withdrawn if she gets out of line.
“While we are required to know our wives and talk to them, that does not mean we need to spend every bit of our free time in conversation with them. We do not need to hang on every word our wife says. While we are required to give them food, clothing and shelter – that food does not have be the fancy food she wants, that clothing does not have to be the fancy clothing she wants and that house does not have to be the fancy house she wants,” he wrote, before adding that one night of wild sex is insufficient.
“I don’t just mean she just rocks his world one night, and then he lavishes her with all these things. No – she sees that in order to get ‘some’ of her wants met she must FIRST reverence her husband outside the bedroom and she must ravish him inside the bedroom and this becomes the pattern of her behavior toward her husband, He explained. ” If either the reverence or ravishing goes down, he pulls back on these other things so she understands the correlation.”
Ugh…fuck you Solomon and Tomassi and the rest of these assholes.
Patriarch of Duggar-like family with 19 kids and reality show accused of sexual misconduct cover-up – No surprise there.
No More Mister Nice Blog: KEEP TELLING YOURSELF THAT GOP CRAZIES WILL CALM DOWN ANY DAY NOW
Hobby Lobby investigated for trying to import ancient artifacts from Iraq | US news | The Guardian
Customs agents seized thousands of years-old tablets imported by owners of the Christian chain of craft stores and intended for the $800m Museum of the Bible
Fox & Friends continued their history of on-air sexism when they turned to a panel of men to literally judge whether three women were appropriately wearing leggings. Fox News’ flagship morning show has a long history of promoting sexism on-air, whether it’s co-host Brian Kilmeade introducing his female colleagues by stating, “Let’s see if the girls have clothes on,” or spending 13 minutes questioning women’s driving abilities. To be fair, the network’s programming overall isn’t much better. Fox & Friends‘ overt sexism reached a new level during its October 27 edition in which a panel of three men were asked to judge the appropriateness of three women’s appearances. Co-host Steve Doocy started things off by asking panelist Willie Robertson of Duck Dynasty, “Are you comfortable with the women in your life parading in public in leggings?” Throughout the segment the panelists weighed in on each outfit, with Robertson quipping,
“I’d like a photo” of one of the models, and Fox’s Arthur Aidala saying of another model’s “physique,” “God bless you, you’ve worked out, you’ve earned that.” Aidala then joked, “We all took nitroglycerin pills before she came on, just to make sure.” To conclude the panel discussion, Doocy speculated that, “I don’t think anybody is in too much trouble,” with Aidala agreeing, “No, I think we made it.” From the October 27 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends:
In related news: Sheriff to Decide Fate of Deputy in Classroom Arrest
This…Blackmail is one way to get on base – The Washington Post
Disgraced former baseball player Lenny Dykstra, who played center field for the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets, apparently developed an innovative way to get on base: Blackmail umpires. From Philly.com:
Dykstra admitted while being interviewed, with no provocation, that he used half a million dollars to hire a private investigation team to get dirt on umpires, including extramarital affairs and gambling, that he would then use to shrink his personal strike zone.
“It wasn’t a coincidence I led the league in walks the next few years, was it?”
WTF?
Former NYC jailhouse will be turned into a women’s center – NY Daily News
A former women’s prison located in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood is being converted into a women’s center, Gov. Cuomo said Monday.
The former medium-security Bayview Correctional Facility will be redeveloped by the NoVo Foundation, a not-for-profit group funded by Warren Buffett, and the Goren Group.
The 100,000-square-foot “Women’s Building” will include office space for activists and groups that focus on women’s issues, community space for a female adolescent wellness clinic, a women’s art gallery and a restaurant.
“We are continuing our efforts to shatter the glass ceiling by taking down an institution of defeat and turning it into opportunity and social reform for women,” Cuomo said.
Good.
That is all I have today, and get one last laugh, from this little pug video.
What are you all looking at today?
Sunday Reads : Career Girls
Posted: September 27, 2015 Filed under: 2016 elections, Climate Change, Environment, Environmental Protection, History, morning reads, Planned Parenthood, poverty, prison population, the GOP, U.S. Politics, War on Women, Water, We are so F'd, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | Tags: environmental racism 16 Comments
Good Morning
The proverbial shit has hit the fan, and whatever happens next is speculation at this point.
As for what I think? I think we are f’d.
That could be my negativity and depression talking. Nah, it is more than that…what else could any sane person expect?
So, as you take a look at some of the news articles for today’s reads, think about what will happen over the next few months.
On the topic of crazy conservatives….they are having a values summit or hypocrite-bigot-get-together shindig:
GOP Candidates Use ‘Defund Planned Parenthood’ Rally Cry at Conservative Summit
WATCH: Conservative Values Voter crowd goes bonkers when they learn Boehner is resigning
Evangelicals aim to strengthen their political influence | www.myajc.com
They promise a conservative “awakening” in America unlike any other seen in the past decade, a show of political force that will rock the Republican electorate.
Evangelical leaders who are feeling more isolated in a Republican Party focused on fiscal issues rather than social debates are planning to assert themselves ahead of a free-for-all GOP nominating contest with more than a dozen contenders.
But this….
Serving God or government?
Cruz and Huckabee journeyed recently to a rally at Rock Springs Church, an evangelical megachurch in Milner, Ga., about 50 miles south of Atlanta, to curry favor with thousands of conservatives who had traveled from all over the region for a fireworks show, a Charlie Daniels concert and face time with the candidates.
The theme of the evening, if there was one, was dissatisfaction with establishment Republicans such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush who have taken more moderate approaches on issues such as gay marriage and illegal immigration.
“I appreciate you standing against the Democrats,” the rally’s organizer, Benny Tate, said to thousands huddled on the rolling hills on the church’s campus. “But I really appreciate you standing against the Republican Party when you think they are wrong.”
Huckabee, a one-time Baptist preacher who won Georgia’s primary in 2008, predicted a protracted fight against the 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court (he called it the “extreme court” to scattered laughter) that struck down bans on same-sex weddings.
“Over the next few years I fully believe that people of faith, whether they be Christians, Jewish, whatever they may be, are going to be called upon, and already are, to determine, ‘Will you serve God or will you serve government?’ ” he said. “And I wonder, will we be as faithful to our faith and to our freedom as those men who signed that declaration 239 years ago?”
He’s followed that by supporting Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who became a hero to opponents of same-sex marriage when she was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses because she objected to gay weddings. Huckabee delighted conservative crowds by volunteering to spend years in jail to fight the “tyranny under people who think they can take our freedom and conscience away.”
Cruz, the son of a born-again Christian preacher, spoke of a brewing “awakening” to defend the values of conservatives. Like other Republicans, he talked wistfully of the millions of evangelicals who he said spurned Mitt Romney in 2012, and he vowed to fan the flames of evangelicals across the nation.
“It’s my hope that that marriage decision serves as a spark to start a fire that becomes a raging inferno and awakening that sweeps this country as the body of Christ rises up to defend the values that have built America into this great nation,” Cruz said.
The fierce competition has stoked fears of a rerun of the past two presidential campaigns, where candidates courting the evangelical vote split the field and left many disillusioned. Bart Tharpe, a GOP activist in Macon, Ga., who attended a recent evangelical rally, said he’s confident Christian conservatives have learned a lesson.
“I’ll vote for any one of them,” he said. “It’s better than any ungodly idiot the Democrats are running.”
Gawd help us! More at the link, if you can bear it.
Republican ‘Values’ voters back Ted Cruz-Ben Carson presidential ticket
Family Research Council Action, a Christian lobbying group, said on Saturday that more attendees polled at the Values Voter Summit said Cruz, a leader with the Republican’s Tea Party wing, should be the party’s presidential nominee for the November 2016 election.
Cruz, who also won the group’s so-called “straw poll” the previous two years, took 35 percent of the support among the nearly 2,700 summit-goers, followed by Carson with 18 percent, the group said in a statement. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee got 14 percent and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida 13 percent.
Business tycoon Donald Trump, who has led public opinion polls, came in fifth place with 5 percent.
Carson led among attendees for the vice presidential nod with 25 percent support among those polled, followed by former business executive Carly Fiorina with 21 percent and Cruz with 14 percent, the group said.
Uh….someone get me a bucket…I feel ill.
But let’s not focus on these idiot candidates. Let’s look at some other idiot candidates…this one is from Canada.
The Candidate Who Didn’t Know What Auschwitz Was – The Daily Beast
Alex Johnstone, an education official who is running for Canada’s parliament, made a penis joke about Auschwitz and then apologized—saying she wasn’t aware it was a concentration camp.History is meant to help people learn from mistakes. But mistakes can still be made if people don’t learn history. Alex Johnstone, who is running for a parliamentary seat in Canada, has drawn heat for not knowing about the past this week. Specifically, not knowing about very noteworthy facts about the Holocaust. The candidate, who is also a vice chairwoman of a school board in Hamilton, Ontario, made a phallic joke about a picture from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.“Ahh, the infamous Pollish, phallic hydro posts….of course you took pictures of this!” she wrote on a friend’s Facebook wall in 2008 beneath a picture of a barbed-wire gate at the concentration camp. “It expresses the how the curve is normal, natural and healthy right!”Canadian humor is peculiar.
I don’t know about peculiar. The fact that she does not know about Auschwitz is disturbing. But then, I guess it is better than outright denying that it ever happened in the first place…right?
Adding insult to injury, Johnstone stated that she didn’t know what Auschwitz even was.
“Well, I didn’t know what Auschwitz was, or I didn’t up until today,” she said in an interview Tuesday night. Johnstone, who appears to be in her thirties, said she had “heard about concentration camps.”
“I think that constituents, the community is more interested in the values and principles that I have been standing for, particularly in this election, and I think the fact that I’ve run a clean campaign really demonstrates that,” she said.
Johnstone has not responded to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.
Anyway, back to the US candidates:
GOP insiders: Jindal and Pataki quit next – POLITICO
Bobby Jindal and George Pataki are the next two quitters in the Republican field.
That’s the assessment of Republicans in the POLITICO Caucus, our weekly bipartisan survey of the top activists, operatives and strategists in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Story Continued Below
A quarter of Iowa Republicans say it’s Jindal, a frequent visitor to their state, who is on his way out.
“He’s become desperate,” an Iowa Republican said. “He’s taken to attacking Trump (we know how that worked out for Perry and Walker) and has nothing going on here in Iowa.”
Added another, who like all participants was granted anonymity in order to speak freely:“He’s taken the hard inside right lane, and there’s simply too much competition there (Cruz, Huckabee, Santorum).”
But in New Hampshire, Pataki is considered most likely to drop out next, with 27 percent of Republican insiders there pointing to him.
“There comes a point when his irrelevance becomes crystal clear even to him,” a New Hampshire Republican said.
The next quote is sure to make some of you laugh like hell:
“The Spice Girls were big in the 1990s, too, but no one wants to see them on a reunion tour,” snarked another New Hampshire Republican.
What the fuck is that about?
Ha..these Republicans…they are so darn snarky…and witty too.
More links on the right….
‘Pro-life’ Red States Working Together So They Won’t Miss Out On An Execution Opportunity «
“All life is precious.” That is the theme of the good Christians of the Republican party. Their belief that holding onto that precept makes them morally superior is what allows them to also be the most hypocritical group of people in history.
All life is precious, unless you’ve been convicted of a crime we deem horrendous enough to kill you. All life is precious unless you refused to comply with a police officer and were shot dead for it. All life is precious unless you walk onto my property looking for assistance and I decide to “castle doctrine” your ass. All life is precious unless I can convince a jury of white people I was “standing my ground” when I chased that guy and killed him after I was told to stand still.
All life is precious if the Republican party decides it is, which seems to only cover pre-humans from -9 months until birth, and people who have been declared brain dead.
Prison Labor in America: How Is It Legal? via- The Atlantic
The Thirteenth Amendment forbade slavery and involuntary servitude, “except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”
A look at slavery reinvented at Angola Prison.
The Horrifying Reality of Abortion Before It Was Legal in America
Many of us have grown up in a time when we take for granted that abortion is legal. But older generations of doctors and women remember what it took to obtain an abortion before Roe v. Wade. It wasn’t pretty.
This next link…the image alone is enough to give pause….
The Contaminated Water of a Financial Crisis | Al Jazeera America
Researchers have found high levels of lead in the water supply in Flint, Michigan, after the economically battered city switched its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River in an attempt to save money. The city issued a lead warning on Friday, ramping up residents’ health concerns — and questions about the tradeoffs cash-strapped cities make to revive their economies.
A separate study, conducted by researchers at Virginia Tech, tested water samples from homes in Flint andconcluded that the city “has a very serious lead in water problem.” They announced the results in mid-September, saying the lead levels in several samples of city water exceeded 100 parts per billion — well over the EPA’s allowed level of 15 parts per billion.
Flint, synonymous with a perennially devastated rust belt, has long been a poster child of economic depression. Like nearby Detroit, Flint was put into the hands of a succession of emergency managers appointed by the governor. Flint’s switch from Lake Huron water, through the Detroit Water and Sewage Department, to water from the Flint River happened during the administration of emergency manager Darnell Earley. In March 2014, the city council voted on a resolution to do “all things necessary” to stop using the Flint River as the city’s water source. Jerry Ambrose, Earley’s successor, called that decision “incomprehensible,” citing a savings of $12 million a year. Ambrose could not immediately be reached for comment at the time this story was published.
Once again…the poor predominantly black neighborhoods are getting shafted…environmentally speaking.
Boiling water contaminated with lead does not make it safe to drink — in fact, it can make the effects of the lead worse by concentrating it. The options left to people in Flint are to either buy bottled water, or to get filters for their faucets. Both options are a financial stretch for many residents.
According to census data, Flint’s median household income between 2009 and 2013 was $24,834, compared to Michigan’s median household income of $48,411. Between those same years, 41.5 percent of Flint’s residents were living below the poverty level.
“I started calling people and realized that a lot of people in Flint cannot afford to buy bottled water on a regular basis,” said Anurag Mantha, a Virginia Tech graduate student who was on a research team that tested the city’s water.
“A second option that we give them is to buy a national sanitation foundation certified lead filters,” Mantha said. “These are available in home improvement stores and Amazon. But I realized that people couldn’t afford to buy them as well.”
Mantha helped start a GoFundMe campaign to help residents afford water filters. The campaign hopes to raise $25,000 to buy them for at least 1,000 residents, and has so far raised $3,560 in 15 days.
Back in Flint, Melissa Mays faulted the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and the City of Flint.
“They’re saying, ‘Oh, it’s not that bad.’ They’re trying to say it only affects a few people and it’s their own problem. They’re trying to shake off all responsibly,” Mays said. “My tub is green because there’s so much copper leaching into both of my bathtubs in my house … and I’m just furious.”
Okay, more links in dump fashion, true dump fashion:
California Lake Dries Up Overnight, Leaving Thousands Of Dead Fish
The power company with water rights to the lake blames drought, but a neighbor says the explanation sounds fishy.
How The Media Is Helping A Hate Group Leader Gain Political Power | Blog | Media Matters for America
Tony Perkins is the head of one of the most extreme anti-gay hate groups in the country, yet media outlets continue to give him a platform that enables him to play a major role in mainstream conservative politics.
Neuroscientist calculates feel-good Top 10 playlist – The Boston Globe
“A ‘feel good song’ is rather tricky to define,” writes Dr. Jolij on his website. “Music appreciation is highly personal and strongly depends on social context, and personal associations. In that respect, the idea of a ‘feel
good formula’ is a bit odd — factoring in all these personal aspects is next to impossible, in particular if you want to come up with a quantita[ti]ve feel good formula. Basically, what you need are song features that you can express in numbers.”
I think that can be useful with this next link:
A little, insightful comic about living with chronic depression and anxiety
Neither Cursed Nor Possessed: Mental Abnormality in the Late Middle Ages
Now, some bodies….body parts….murder…and mystery.
A Killer Hiding on the Appalachian Trail? – The Daily Beast
9,000-year-old hunter-gatherer ritualised decapitation
9,000-Year-Old Decapitated Skull Discovered in Brazil – Archaeology Magazine
Was this 9,000-year-old American decapitated out of kindness? – CSMonitor.com
Fragments of a human body including a jaw, the first six cervical vertebrae, and two severed hands that had been laid over the face of a skull in opposite directions have been unearthed at Lapa do Santo, a hunter-gatherer rock-shelter site in east-central Brazil. According to a press release from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, v-shaped cut marks were found on the jaw and the sixth cervical vertebra. André Strauss of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and his colleagues believe that the 9,000-year-old remains could represent the oldest case of decapitation in the Americas. Isotopic analysis of the bones and of other human remains at the site indicate that the individual had been a local member of the group, so the decapitation may have been part of a mortuary ritual, rather than a case of trophy-taking during war.
Interview: Bryan Carberry And Clay Tweel, Directors Of ‘Finders Keepers’ : NPR
Years ago, in the small town of Maiden, N.C., a man named Shannon Whisnant bought a storage locker, and in it he found a grill. When he took both of them home and opened the grill, he discovered something he hadn’t been expecting: a mummified human leg.
Between 50 and 75 medieval skeletons discovered at Westminster Abbey – Medievalists.net
Archaeologists have discovered the skeletal remains of between 50 to 75 individuals buried in the walls of Westminster Abbey. It is believed that they date from the 11th or early 12th century.
The remains had been placed under Victorian drainage pipes outside the wall of Poets’ Corner, which is part of the South Transept of the famous English Collegiate Church. The archaeologists were working there as part of a major project to build a new £19 million tower that will allow visitors more access to the site.
Paw Jorgensen of Pre-Construct Archaeology told The Guardian that the remains likely belong to monks associated with Westminster Abbey, and that they were moved twice since the first burial – first in the 13th century when the church was rebuilt by Henry III, and then in the Victorian era. Workmen from that period even stole the skull of individual who was found in a stone tomb.
For the Love of a Noblewoman – Archaeology Magazine
The remarkably well preserved, fully dressed body of a seventeenth-century noblewoman has been found in a lead coffin in the French city of Rennes. A team led by Rosenn Colleter of the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) made the discovery while excavating the remains of a fourteenth-century convent at the site of a future conference center. Along with some 800 graves, the archaeologists unearthed five lead coffins, one of which was still hermetically sealed and held the nearly intact body. “I knew at once that it was a beautiful discovery,” says Colleter, “and that we would need to work quickly so as not to lose any information to decomposition.”
The woman was buried with a heart-shaped relic inscribed with her husband’s name and containing his heart. This allowed the team to identify her as Louise de Quengo,
Lady of Brefeillac, who died in 1656. The unusually complete state of de Quengo’s body and clothing is giving specialists a new look at French aristocratic burial practices of the time.
Laboratory analysis of the remains will allow researchers to reconstruct the pathogens she carried, including tuberculosis. “It’s rare that you are able to give a seventeenth-century person a comprehensive health check,” says Colleter. The Lady of Brefeillac will be reburied later this year.
We will end these series of links with ghost stories of course:
10 Real-Life Haunted Locations Across the U.S.
Now, a couple of links on women’s issues:
New York City High School to Offer Free Tampons | Al Jazeera America
Reviving a Traditional Irish Women’s Sport in New York – The New York Times
A look at one of my favorite actors….Michael Fassbender: fearless performer with a craftsman’s approach to the art of acting | Film | The Guardian
Michael Fassbender, Nobody’s Fool – The New York Times
But Fassbender is also still very much the teenager of that original drama-school audition: He welcomes changes as they present themselves and he follows the signs of the present. Justin Kurzel, the director of ‘‘Macbeth,’’ said of working with Fassbender, ‘‘He’s so extremely prepared, he’s never reaching for words. And in that way he’s able to be very open to the conditions of the moment — to whatever is going on that day, to the other people who are around. He can discover something in the moment of doing. That’s why he’s an artist. That’s why he’s one of the best around.’’
[…]
Fassbender has a very deliberate and specific method: ‘‘I go over the words again and again and again and again. Hundreds of times. It’s more of a doing than a thinking thing. I have thoughts about the characters, I learn about them, but that’s not necessarily where the majority of the work gets done.’’
Oh, he gets it done…
And we end it all with an adorable video:
H/T Kathy….
Enjoy your last Sunday of September. Can you believe it!
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