đđź Â See that image? I still haven’t spoken those two words together… and very proud of that fact.
It is Father’s Day…so let me first start out by wishing all the daddies the best on this special Sunday.
I was planning on writing a happy post, with happy links. Then I started to review the news and realized…who am I trying to kid? Such crap goings on.
That is why today’s ffather’s Day post is spelled as such…we have such an embarrassment in office, and in the administration. These dudes are fathers but look at what horrible pieces of shit they are…
They do not deserve a capital letter Father’s Day.
So let us commemorate it…which brings us to ffather’s Day.
A new report argues that the Republican health law would slash jobs and perhaps trigger a recession.
A new report from the Commonwealth Fund and George Washington University researchers Leighton Ku, Erika Steinmetz, Erin Brantley, Nikhil Holla, and Brian K. Bruen finds that the AHCA would slash total jobs by about a million, total state gross domestic products by $93 billion, and total business output by $148 billion by 2026. Most of those jobs would be shed from the health-care industry, which would contract severely over that frame. Most of the losses in economic activity would come in states that have expanded Medicaid to low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act.
Reproductive rights have been taking a hit left and right, and now folks living in Missouri may be facing another setback. Their state Senate has just voted to pass a bill this past Wednesday night after 10 hours of closed-door meetings that, if fully approved, could legally allow hiring managers to discriminate against those who have gotten abortions in the past, as well as applicants who use birth control.
Alison Drieth, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, told The Kansas City Star what she thought about the late night vote made by the Senate. âPassing further restrictions on womenâs access to abortion in the dark of night is shameful, at best,â she said. âRepublican senators know this, or they would have allowed the hundreds of people rallying at the Capitol on Wednesday take part in the process.â
Reproductive rights have been taking a hit left and right, and now folks living in Missouri may be facing another setback. Their state Senate has just voted to pass a bill this past Wednesday night after 10 hours of closed-door meetings that, if fully approved, could legally allow hiring managers to discriminate against those who have gotten abortions in the past, as well as applicants who use birth control.
Alison Drieth, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, told The Kansas City Star what she thought about the late night vote made by the Senate. âPassing further restrictions on womenâs access to abortion in the dark of night is shameful, at best,â she said. âRepublican senators know this, or they would have allowed the hundreds of people rallying at the Capitol on Wednesday take part in the process.â
If passed, the bill would put stringent and unwanted restrictions on abortion providers, as the bill would require state health departments to annually inspect clinics unannounced. The Kansas City Star reports, “It also would provide stronger whistleblower protections for employees of abortion clinics and new requirements for pathologists who provide services to abortion clinics.” Both employers and landlords would be allowed to put into place discriminatory practices based on applicants reproductive health decisions. There’s currently an ordinance in place banning this type of discrimination that the bill aims to nullify, based on the idea that it infringes on the religious rights of faith-based employers and landlords.
This bill is not law yet, however, so there is hope. The Missouri House will reconvene next week, and they’ll either ask the Senate to make adjustments to the bill or pass it up to the governor without any changes. We’ll just have to watch this one and see what happens.
Next up, bully kids. I wonder how many of these kids learned their bully tactics from their fathers:
This is Trump’s America: kids are mimicking the president in rhetoric and action
Donald Trumpâs real campaign promise was that he would give whites back the power they imagined theyâd lost. That message was stated not in dog whistles, but loudly enough that the entire country heard him, even children. The trickle-down effect of Trumpâs campaign rhetoric and election is now being felt among kids in schools across the country. Bullying, according to a Buzzfeed News report, has taken on an âalarming twist . . . with white students using the presidentâs words and slogans to bully Latino, Middle Eastern, black, Asian, and Jewish classmates.â
Buzzfeed reporters analyzed data collected by the Documenting Hate Project, which catalogs reports of bias and bullying, and found more than â50 incidents, across 26 states, in which a K-12 student invoked Trumpâs name or message in an apparent effort to harass a classmate during the past school year.â The incidents took place between October 2016 and May 2017. Here are just a fraction of the incidents cited by Buzzfeed investigators:
A group of white male students at a high school in Shakopee, Minnesota who surrounded an African-American girl and sang the national anthem, âreplacing the closing line with âand the home of the slaves.ââ
In a third-grade classroom in Louisville, Kentucky, a boy chased a Latina girl while screaming âBuild the wall!â
On the school bus, a white eighth-grader told a Filipino classmate, âYou are going to be deported.â
A white eighth-grade student in Brea, California, told a black student, âNow that Trump won, youâre going to have to go back to Africa, where you belong.â
An English teacher in Spokane Valley, Washington, describes discovering a âgroup of white students following a Latino student in the hallway, taunting him with chants of âthe wallâs coming!â and âTrump! Trump! Trump!ââ
The Dallas, Texas mother of a sixth-grader reported that on Election Day, students at her sonâs school harassed him and his friends with shouts of, âHeil Hitlary.â One of the bullied students was told, âOne million of your lives is worth less than 30,000 deleted emails.â
These represent just a handful of the bullying incidents the Buzzfeed article lists. The authors acknowledge that countless incidents go unreported, and spoke to parents whose children had avoiding telling school authorities because of fears of social backlash. Kids are infamously cruel. And while some school administrators suggested the bullies in these cases may have been unaware of what their words truly meant â an excuse thatâs believable for the youngest offenders â it would be naive to think Trump is the only source theyâre learning from. While the president has certainly helped make the environment exponentially more toxic, parents, friends and neighbors feed the ugliness as well.
There is a new rally planned in Charlottesville, how many ffathers will attend this?
Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip who was shot by a gunman who attacked a congressional baseball practice on Wednesday, has kept company with racists. He was forced to apologize for speaking at an international conference of white supremacists, and reportedly referred to himself as âDavid Duke without the baggage.â Following Scaliseâs shooting, Duke praised him for âdefending white civil rights.â
Scalise has also been described as one of the most anti-LGBTQ politicians in Washington. Heâs voted against LBGTQ rights over and over again. He also authored Louisianaâs ban on same-sex marriage. Like many of his ilk, he said he was only trying to protect âtraditionalâ marriage.
So it is a point of especially delicious irony that Scalise, who survived the attack (and is reportedly in critical condition), may owe his life to a queer black woman.
Crystal Griner, a Capitol Police officer, was one of two special agents on Scaliseâs security detail yesterday who helped take down shooter James Hodgkinson. People at the scene said that the two officers prevented an all-out âmassacreâ on the field that day, engaging in a firefight with Hodgkinson before killing him.
Griner sustained wounds in the fight, and she, like Scalise, was in a hospital recovering last night. By her side was her wife, Tiffany.
During the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017, the moon will completely cover the disk of the sun from Oregon to South Carolina. During this period of “totality,” eclipse observers will likely report feeling a sudden drop in temperature. Just how much does the mercury drop during this celestial event?
During the total solar eclipse on Dec. 9, 1834, the Gettysburg Republican Banner reported that in some places, the eclipse caused the temperature to drop by as much as 28 degrees Fahrenheit, from 78 degrees F to 50 degrees F (25 degrees Celsius to 10 degrees C). During a total solar eclipse on the Norwegian island of Svalbard in March 2015, temperatures dropped from 8 degrees F to minus 7 degrees F (minus 13 C to minus 21 degrees C).
This weekend in Boston a wonderful thing to see….Tall ships!
Sheâs one of the last surviving legends of Hollywoodâs golden age.
Her beauty and enigmatic smile saw Olivia de Havilland play alongside the biggest names of the silver screen â Errol Flynn, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift.
Off screen she was romanced by the likes of Jimmy Stewart, John Huston and Howard Hughes â and reportedly turned down the advances of John F Kennedy. She won two best actress Oscars in a career spanning six decades and 49 feature films â many of them considered to be classics.
But it is only now â two weeks before her 101st birthday â that the Gone With The Wind actress has been given a damehood for services to drama. It makes her the oldest woman ever to receive the honour. In a statement, she called it âthe most gratifying of birthday presentsâ.
My aunt is on a little vacation on the Northwest coast…she sent me this text last night:
Funny eh?
What is going on in your Sunday…funday?
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Today’s post is going to focus on the few days…and the shooting deaths of two black men by police.
By now I am sure you have heard of #TerenceCrutcher …you may not have yet heard of #KeithLamontScott. The fact that I’ve put their names in #hashtag format should give you a huge clue…these two men are the latest men to be killed by police while being black.
A fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man by a white officer has reopened fresh wounds in this city with a fraught history among African Americans, white residents and police officers.
A graphic police video shows Terence Crutcher, 40, being fatally shot by a police officer Friday night as he walks with his hands up toward his SUV, stalled out in the middle of the road.
The police shooting victim in Charlotte, North Carolina has been identified by friends and family as Keith Lamont Scott, 43. The officer who shot Scott has been identified as Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Brentley Vinson.
UPDATE: 9/20/16, 9:00 p.m. ET â The victimâs daughter, Lyric Scott, has gone live again from a growing protest in response to the police shooting of her father.
***ORIGINAL STORY BELOW***
A disabled black man has died at the hospital after being shot by a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Tuesday afternoon on Old Concord Road in University City, a subdivision of Charlotte, NC.
Police said they were searching for someone who had outstanding warrants when they saw a man with what they believed to be a gun leave a vehicle.
According to police reports, the man, who has not been named, returned to his vehicle. When they approached the man, they claim he âposed an imminent deadly threat to the officersâ and one of them opened fire. An eyewitness told the victimâs daughter that a Taser was used on her father, then he was shot at least three times.
Medics arrived and the injured man was taken to Carolinas Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead.
The victim was not the subject of the initial search, said Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney.
I have so much to say, but my internet is acting up or wordpress is doing something wonky…I will give you plenty of links for now…more to be said in the comments.
Police were originally responding to an unrelated call when they approached Crutcherâs vehicle, which had been stalled in the middle of the street. Shortly after the officers arrived, one officer deployed his taser on Crutcher who stood by his car. Moments later, Officer Betty Shelby, who is white, fatally shot Crutcher, who was black and unarmed, while he had his hands raised in the air, according to this graphic video footage released on Monday. Inone video that was captured by an overhead helicopter, Crutcher is seen standing by his car while a police officer is overheard describing him as a âbad dude.â
âThat big âbad dudeâ â his life mattered,â Crutcherâs twin sister Tiffany Crutcher told reporters on Monday, according to Tulsa World. She went on to demand an end to police brutality. âThe chain breaks here. Weâre going to stop it right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This is bigger than us right here. Weâre going to stop it right here.â
Tiffany, who just celebrated her 40th birthday with her brother, mentioned a recent text message she received from Terence that she said read, âIâm going to show you. Iâm going to make you all proud.â
She expressed her grievance over his loss and how Terence will never get that chance, âbecause of the negligence and the incompetency and the insensitivity, and because he was a big, âbad dude,ââ Tiffany said. âAnd so weâre demanding today, immediately, that charges are pressed against this officer that was incompetent, that took my brotherâs life.â
[…]
âWhen Terence was shot, he laid on the ground bleeding out without any assistance,â Dario Solomon-Simmons, an attorney for the family and longtime family friend, said at the conference. âTerence died on that street by himself in his own blood, without any help.â
âThis video is extremely disturbing,â he added. âWithout a doubt we believe this was an unjustified shooting that should not have happened.â
The anger around Crutcherâs death has been felt from many on social media who have poured out their grievances online over the police killing of yet another unarmed black man with the trending hashtag #TerenceCrutcher. However, as the mourning continues, Crutcherâs sister has asked that people remain peaceful as they demonstrate their anger over his death.
âJust know that our voices will be heard,â she said. âThe video will speak for itself. Letâs protest. Letâs do what we have to do, but letâs just make sure that we do it peacefully, to respect the culture of (the Crutcher family).â
Kaepernickâs decision to sit or take a knee during the national anthem first drew attention after his teamâs Aug. 26 preseason game against the Green Bay Packers, when he told NFL.com that he was ânot going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.â Since then, Kaepernickâs continued protest has drawn considerable criticism from politicians, police unions, pundits, otherprofessionalathletesand many on social media who have opposed both his message and his method of conveying it.
But the problem Kaepernick wants to highlight has continued. And on Monday, it was back in the news again, after police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, released multiple videos that showed the fatal shooting of Terence Crutcher.
The videos show that 40-year-old Crutcher, like so many other black men, was unarmed with his hands in the air when police officers shot and killed him as he returned to his car, which had stalled in the middle of a roadway. The videos run contrary to the departmentâs initial statements about the shooting, which claimed that Crutcher had ignored officersâ warning to raise his hands.
Donald said at a rally: âHillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pickâ [boos from audience] If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although, the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I donât know.âÂ
Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. In short, remote-control murder by lone wolf.
Donaldâs point about Hillary was unambiguous.
What he was doing, as explained by feminist law professor and reproductive rights activist David S. Cohen, was engaging in âstochastic terrorism,â which is âan obscure and non-legal termâ meaning to use âlanguage and other forms of communication âto incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable,’â a sort of incitement well-known among those familiar with anti-choice violence.
Writes Cohen: âStated differently: Trump puts out the dog-whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesnât know which dog.â
The sort of diffused threats that are a feature of stochastic terrorism are, unfortunately, extremely familiar to me. As a feminist progressive woman with a public profile, these are the kinds of ânot really threats â wink!â I get all the time: Hoping someone else will rape and/or kill me.
Or âwarningâ me that someone might â if I insist on keeping up my work. Being on the receiving end of those words for more than a decade: I know what Donald meant.
It is chillingly familiar.
[…]
This man openly incited violence against a woman, who also happens to be a presidential candidate â which makes his exhortation possibly criminal, too.
Doesn’t it make your blood boil? This article is written by Melissa McEwan, she continues focusing on the feminist angle. You can read the rest at the link, but I prefer to focus on the main issue…feminist or not.
What the fuck!!! This is a real presidential candidate, running for the Republican Party, and he called for the assassination of his running mate and “future” president!
I’ve spent months watching and listening to the horrors that spew from Trump’s mouth…as we see, this is yet another time that Trump has, “Gone too far,” only to get away with inciting violence and murder against Hillary and Supreme Court Justices.
One day after his widely discussed “reboot” in which he did nothing more than read basicRepublican economic talking points from a teleprompter, Donald Trump uttered perhaps his most outrageous â and dangerous â ad-lib yet. And that’s saying something for a campaign in which he’s criticized John McCain for being a prisoner of war, characterized Mexicans as rapists, called for banning Muslims from coming into the country, picked a fight with a Gold Star family and urged Russia to hack his political opponent.
Speaking to a crowd in Wilmington, North Carolina, Tuesday, Trump expressed concern about Hillary Clinton possibly picking Supreme Court justices and other judges. He then said, “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know.”
Let that soak in for a second. One of the two major-party nominees for president just called for “Second Amendment people” to “do” something about his political opponent’s judges. According to the Trump campaign’s rapid response team, he was talking about those “Second Amendment people” coming together politically â “unification,” as they called it. The Clinton campaign, and pretty much the entire Internet, saw it differently: as a clear suggestion of violence against a political opponent.
It’s hard not to side with the Clinton campaign here. What Trump said was that a particular group â those who are defined by rallying around guns â should do something about Clinton and her judicial nominees. What can people who rally around guns do that’s different than others? Use those guns.
But it’s really irrelevant what Trump actually meant, because enough people will hear Trump’s comments and think he’s calling for people to take up arms against Clinton, her judges or both. Though most of the people hearing that call may claim he was joking, given what we know about people taking up arms in this country, there will undoubtedly be some people who think he was serious and consider the possibility.
In other words, what Trump just did is engage in so-called stochastic terrorism. This is an obscure and non-legal term that has been occasionally discussed in the academic world for the past decade and a half, and it applies with precision here. Stochastic terrorism, as described by a blogger who summarized the concept several years back, means using language and other forms of communication “to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.”
Let’s break that down in the context of what Trump said. Predicting any one particular individual following his call to use violence against Clinton or her judges is statistically impossible. But wecan predict that there could be a presently unknown lone wolf who hears his call and takes action in the future.
Stated differently: Trump puts out the dog whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesn’t know which dog.
Those of us who work against anti-abortion violence unfortunately know all about this. Valerie Tarico wrote about this form of terrorism following the Planned Parenthood murders in Colorado Springs last November. The pattern she noted there is 100 percent applicable to Donald Trump and his supporters right now â except that we haven’t yet had the major act of violence at the end of the string. As Tarico wrote:
“1. A public figure with access to the airwaves or pulpit demonizes a person or group of persons.
2. With repetition, the targeted person or group is gradually dehumanized, depicted as loathsome and dangerousâarousing a combustible combination of fear and moral disgust.
3. Violent images and metaphors, jokes about violence, analogies to past ‘purges’ against reviled groups, use of righteous religious languageâall of these typically stop just short of an explicit call to arms.
4. When violence erupts, the public figures who have incited the violence condemn itâclaiming no one could possibly have foreseen the ‘tragedy.'”
This explains Donald Trump’s campaign against Hillary Clinton to a letter. He has 1) demonized her whenever he can by calling her “Crooked Hillary” and constantly degrading her; 2) organized a convention around which the central theme, repeated over and over, was that Clinton is a criminal who needs to be locked up, clearly using fear and moral disgust as motivators; and 3) is now using violent metaphors (or “jokes,” if that’s what you think his statements were) against her, just short of an explicit call to arms.
Now we just have to hope that #4 doesn’t come about â that violence does not erupt. Though, if it does, we know exactly what Trump and his supporters will say: that they never could have foreseen this tragedy.
His extraordinary remark on Tuesday was swiftly condemned by Democrats. Robby Mook, Clintonâs campaign manager, said: âThis is simple â what Trump is saying is dangerous. A person seeking to be the president of the United States should not suggest violence in any way.â
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting took place in Newtown in 2012, went further in a tweet: âDonât treat this as a political misstep. Itâs an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy & crisis.â
British novelist Salman Rushdie then weighed in, tweeting: âOf course the Trump flacks are now trying to confuse the issue, but Senator Murphy is clear about what Trump meant.â
The claim was rejected by Jeff Sessions, a Republican senator from Alabama and longtime Trump supporter. He responded on CNN: âTotally wrong. I donât believe thatâs true. I donât believe thatâs at all what he meant.â
But Sessions acknowledged: âIt may have been awkwardly phrased.â
As the usual line goes, Trump is allowed to explain his “true” meaning behind his words:
Trump said later in reply to Sean Hannity on Fox News that he was referring to the political movement around the Second Amendment.
Hannity asked: âYou know, so obviously youâre saying that thereâs a strong political movement within the Second Amendment, and if people mobilize and vote, they can stop Hillary from having this impact on the court. But thatâs not how the media is spinning it. Whatâs your reaction to it?â
Trump replied: âWell, I just heard about that, and it was amazing because nobody in that room thought anything other than what you just said. This is a political movement. This is a strong, powerful movement, the Second Amendment ⌠there can be no other interpretation. Even reporters have told me â I mean give me a break.â
Trump has been striving to show more discipline on the campaign trail after astring of gaffes in recent weeks. He remained in control in Detroit on Monday when a speech on the economy was repeatedly interrupted by protesters. But in Wilmington, he apparently could not resist going off-script.
Campaigners for gun control expressed outrage at his off-the-cuff remark. Po Murray, chair of the Newtown Action Alliance, said: âDonald Trump continues to pander to the corporate gun lobby and the gun extremists who thrive on fear and rhetoric.
âAny suggestion that gun violence should be used to stop Hillary Clinton from appointing supreme court justices is dangerous and reckless. Itâs no surprise that 50 GOP national security experts have signed a letter making a pledge to not vote for him.â
And this…
The concern was echoed by Paul Begala, a former adviser to Bill Clinton in the White House. âThis is not something that should be joked about,â he told CNN. âI hope in the best case you could say he was joking. It didnât seem like a joke to me. Tony Schwartz, the guy who wrote [Trumpâs book] The Art of the Deal, says Trump never jokes.
âI fear that an unbalanced person hears that in this inflamed environment and, God forbid, thinks that was a threat. I certainly take it as a threat, I really do, and Trump needs to apologise.â
Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and National Security Agency, said on the same channel:
âWell, let me say, if someone had have said that outside the hall heâd be in the back of a police wagon now with the secret service questioning him.â
As yet another controversy threatened to engulf him, Trumpâs campaign insisted that his words had been misunderstood. Jason Miller, a spokesperson, attempted to explain the candidateâs comments. âItâs called the power of unification,â he said. âSecond amendment people have amazing spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power. And this year, they will be voting in record numbers, and it wonât be for Hillary Clinton, it will be for Donald Trump.â
National Rifle Association spokeswoman Jennifer Baker called the uproar over Trumpâs remarks a âdistraction created by the dishonest media.â
As Iâm sure youâve heard, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump invoked the Second Amendment at a rally yesterday evening and implied that gun owners may need to shoot Hillary Clinton or the Supreme Court judges she nominates as president.
That was not a joke and it isnât funny, but Speaker of the House Paul Ryan insists that it was.
âIâve been a little busy today. I heard about this Second Amendment quote. It sounds like just a joke gone bad. I hope he clears it up very quickly. You should never joke about something like that,â Ryan said at a press conference after winning his Republican primary. âI didnât actually hear the comments, I only heard about those comments.â
A joke gone bad is a toady like Paul Ryan ever being treated like a serious person and being third in line to the presidency. Assassination is not a joke.
Donald Trump once said he could shoot someone and not lose support over it and I think he was right. Thereâs nothing Trump could say or do that would prompt Speaker Ryan to withdraw his support for Trump.
Chad Copley told the 911 operator to send a police car fast â he was âlocked and loaded,â he said, and going outside to confront a group of âhoodlums.â
âWe got a bunch of hoodlums out here racing,â the 39-year-old Raleigh man told the dispatcher early Sunday morning. âIâm going outside to secure my neighborhood.â
The dispatcher, responding to Copley, asked: âYouâre going to do what?â
âIâm going to secure my neighborhood,â Copley said.
He continued: âIâm on neighborhood watch. I am going to have the neighborhood meet these hoodlums out here racing up and down the street. Itâs 1 in the morning. Thereâs some devil in them. They have firearms and weâre going to secure our neighborhood. If I was you, I would send PD out here as quickly as possible.â
A few minutes later, Copley was on the phone with dispatchers again.
This time, haltingly, he explained the aftermath:
âI yelled at them, âPlease leave the premises,â â he said. âThey were showing firearms, so I fired a warning shot and uh, we got somebody that got hit. âŚ
âI fired my warning shot like Iâm supposed to by law. ⌠They do have firearms, and Iâm trying to protect myself and my family.â
The dispatcher pressed for more information: Whoâs been shot, how badly are they injured â and where, exactly, is the victim?
âPlease just send a car,â Copley responded. âThereâs frigginâ black males outside my frigginâ house with firearms. Please, send PD. Thank you.â
He then hung up.
When officers arrived, they found a 20-year-old black man, Kouren-Rodney Bernard Thomas, dying of a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later.
I have one thing to say, war is hell. Sherman meant to destroy the southern audacity so that it would never forget what happened, that was his message behind his march to the sea…
Those bombs showed the world that nuclear war is the ultimate in devastation, the finality that must be realized, justified and acknowledged with the coming of a nuclear age. It was required to end World War 2, and necessary as a warning of what will come if diplomacy is not the main path to peace going forward. I do not believe it was a war crime.
And, I don’t think we should be wiping out our history and revising it…I’m not talking about changing the names of elementary schools that honor KKK founders…but I have a difficult time with some memorials being eliminated completely. They should remain but I feel that other monuments or large prominent historic markers should be added to explain the historical significance. Make it a real teaching moment for people who see these old statues and carvings on a mountain. (Yeah, carve another monument on Stone Mountain…a memorial to Fredrick Douglas, Harriet Tubman etc.)
Every four years something really cool happens during menâs Olympic diving competitions: The scores that show up on screen cover the diverâs groin area, accidentally making it look like porn.
Hereâs an example of that from the London games:
And here are a bunch of examples of it happening in Rio. Let your mind wander because you sure as hell know we wonât judge. After all, weâre the ones who spent hours screenshotting these in the first place.
Some of these shots are hilarious.
Dicks out, thumbs up!
NBC
WYD, CHEN?!
NBC
#FREETHESPEEDO.
NBC
Hmm?
NBC
Ummm?
NBC
Heâs like, âWhy are you naked, dude?â
NBC
Naked friends are the best friends â¤
NBC
Butt.
NBC
If you havenât noticed, his name is Steele Johnson.
NBC
And that is all for me today. See y’all in the comment section below.
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As you will notice today’s post is being accompanied by black and white stripes. (Or are they white and black stripes?)
Black and white printed stripes, black shadows against white skin, or white lights streaming upwards against a black night.
Whatever the case may be, I think the last few days have brought home my deepest fears…perhaps it is because I live in Banjoville, a town that is so predominately Trump territory. So I have the intimate knowledge of the “phenomena” that is Trump-ism… you know that shit that so many dumb-asses in the media write about…let me tell you plain and simple what is Trump’s Juju with the crowd who is voting for him come November.
It is white supremacy.
Shall I repeat it? Yes, I think I should.
White Supremacy.
And it brings with it all the other horrible baggage you would expect…the usual racism, hate, intolerance, misogyny, assholism, and all the rest peppered with a shit load of “christian values” as they define the code of religious virtue…as it applies to who theyfeel deserves it. Which you all know is limited to those they consider “right” enough (white enough) to meet the approved standard.
Rep. Steve King objected to a comment during a cable news discussion at MSNBC that this will be the last election dominated by old white people.
â
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) offered an unusual defense of the racial homogeneity of his party during a panel on MSNBC Monday evening.
The group, led by Chris Hayes, was discussing the first day of the Republican national convention and Donald Trumpâs history of racially-loaded comments and behavior. King told Hayes that he thought Trump had âmodifiedâ his behavior in that regard, but Esquireâs Charlie Pierce said he didnât see much diversity reflected in the gathering itself.
âIf youâre really optimistic, you can say that this is the last time that old white people will command the Republican Partyâs attention, its platform, its public face,â Pierce said. âThat hall is wired,â he continued. âThat hall is wired by loud, unhappy, dissatisfied white people.â
King objected.
âThis âold white peopleâ business does get a little tired, Charlie,â King said. âIâd ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that youâre talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?â
âThan white people?â Hayes asked, clearly amazed.
âThan, than Western civilization itself,â King replied. âItâs rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. Thatâs all of Western civilization.â
There are lots of basic things wrong with Kingâs statement, even just starting with his category of âwhitenessâ. Whiteness is not ânaturalââ it is an invented category. Were Irish white? A lot of English didnât think so. âWhitesâ rioted against Greek immigrants to the US. White supremacists still argue over whether to let in Italian-Americans. Me, I donât want to be called white and I decline that categorization whenever the government or other people with questionnaires will let me. The Appalachian side of my family probably has some Melungeon to it and some of us arenât all that âwhite.â
Cole goes on to correct King’s ridiculous statement about “civilization” here:
If by civilization is meant urban society with high rates of literacy, scientific and technological innovation, role specialization and division of labor, and high levels of collective government, then northern European Christians did not invent it.
Iraq, Iran, India, China and Egypt did. The Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Elamites, Persians, Indians, Chinese and the Pharaohs of Egypt had civilization for thousands of years while Celts in Britain were painting themselves blue and doing hunting and gathering in the wastes.
There is way more at the link, please go and read the full article.
Of course it is no use to show or tell these Trumptarians the facts. Because they will go on, completely make up false stuff, put it in school books and teach it to the young children. And hey, they don’t even have to stick to charter schools anymore, in Texas…where most of the US public schools purchase their textbooks to use in the public education system, fact is a thing of the past.
Itâs âdeeply flawed,â but that hasnât stopped the Texas State Board of Education before.
A proposed Mexican-American studies textbook has drawn harsh criticism for what Latino educators and scholars in Texas are calling a lack of scholarly expertise, major factual inaccuracies and demeaning characterizations of Mexican-Americans.
âWhat we have now is a deeply flawed and a deeply offensive textbook,â Celina Moreno, of the Texas Latino Education Coalition, said at a Monday press conference.
Groups like Morenoâs came together with professors who specialize in Mexican-American heritage, and who had been independently scrutinizing the textbook, to share some of their disturbing findings.
Emilio Zamora, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, reviewed material that covered the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-48 to the present. He said he found âfive to seven serious, serious errors per page,â which render the entire publication âuseless and even counterproductive.â
The Texas State Board of Education is currently reviewing the book for potential approval. Although the bookâs fate is far from clear, the board has previously approved textbooks and curricula that deny climate change, promote creationism, whitewash historical events and maintain that the roots of Western democracy are found in the Bible.
And last year, the board rejected a proposal that state-approved elementary and high school textbooks be fact-checked by academics.Â
Oh, that emphasis is mine…
Because of the stateâs tremendous clout in the educational publishing world, Dan Quinn of the nonpartisan educational watchdog group Texas Freedom Network told HuffPost that content that makes the grade in the Lone Star State is likely to be adopted â in some form or another â well beyond its borders.
I really feel that this has been coming for some time. I remember writing about this textbook shit years ago…it is one of the topics we have discussed frequently on the blog.
The lone proposal for a Mexican-American heritage textbook came from Momentum Instructions, a company linked to Cynthia Dunbar, a former education board member known for her extreme conservative views. Quinn described her four-year term on the board as âone culture war after another.â
In a 2008 book titled One Nation Under God â released while Dunbar was still serving on the state board â she called public education âtyrannicalâ and a âsubtly deceptive tool of perversion,â according to the Texas Observer.
As for the proposed textbook, Quinn suggested that Dunbar and its authors were seeking to âpromote their own political and personal ideas.â He said the authors lack credible expertise in the field of Mexican-American studies.
Emails and calls to Momentum Instructions were not immediately returned.
It sounds like something you would expect in a nation that has Trump as the official GOP Candidate for President…
As the State Board of Education (SBOE) is accepting comments on the book before voting on it in November, a group of academics and advocacy groups decided to take a closer look at Mexican American Heritage. Organized as the Responsible Ethnic Studies Textbook Coalition, they announced their reviews Monday morning at the Texas Education Agencyâs (TEA) offices in Austin.
As it went on, the press conference began to sound more like the least successful book blurb pitch session ever:
âA deeply flawed and deeply offensive textbook that has no place in Texas classrooms.â â Celina Moreno, Texas Latino Education Coalition
âUseless and even counter-productive.â â Emilio Zamora, professor of history at UT-Austin
âReplete with ⌠offensive racial stereotypes.â â Lilliana SaldaĂąa, associate professor of Mexican-American studies at UT-San Antonio
âSo riddled with factual errors that a traditional publisher would not have recognized or tried to publish this book.â â Christopher Carmona, National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies-Tejas Foco
âWillfully irresponsible, culturally chauvinist and discriminatory.â â Zamora
âThe person who wrote the section on Texas history would have failed a fourth-grade exam. ⌠There are no women cited or quoted in the entire chapter.â â JosĂŠ MarĂa Herrera, assistant professor of education at UT-El Paso
âSimply unworthy. ⌠Obviously a fraud.â â Zamora, again
The coalition is calling for the SBOE to completely reject the book â not just require a few tweaks to the text â for a combination of factual errors, academic laziness and cultural insensitivity.
SaldaĂąa noted that the book not only refers to indigenous people as âIndians,â but provides a lengthy explanation of why âIndiansâ is the best term to use. Elsewhere, SaldaĂąa pointed out, the authors describe one group of people as driven by âbloodlustâ â language she said was better suited to a Hollywood script than a serious academic text.
Board member David Bradley, R-Beaumont, who opposed asking for a Mexican-American studies course and textbook, said the proposed book seems fine.
âItâs really kind of amusing. The left-leaning, radical Hispanic activists, having pounded the table for special treatment, get approval for a special course that nobody else wanted,â Bradley said. âNow they donât like their special textbook? I bet they want everyone to also get an A for just attending? The one thing we canât fix in this world is unhappy people.â
It really pisses me off…fuck him. (That male superior tone in the statement. How I hate it.) And this is how the majority of the population in my home town think. It is exactly how a Trumptonain thinks. And it is the kind of person who will vote him into office.
The triumph of Trump has demonstrated the cost of the devilâs bargain that party elites â and the media â have accepted over the years.
What is on display at the RNC in Cleveland is the Republican id. We always suspected it would look something like this. But even though it reared its ugly head on occasion on Fox News or in Congress â on the lips of some right-wing preacher or billionaire hedge-fund manager. They would compare gays to Satan, progressive taxation to Naziism and people of color to criminals at best, animals at worst â but the more polite, polished folks who spoke for the party would always regretfully shake their well-coiffed heads and explain that wasnât what the party was really about.
And to their eternal shame, most in the media ran interference for this confidence game, only to be blindsided when Trump demonstrated that it had always been a charade.
Well thanks to Donald Trump and his followers, the jig is up. Melania Trumpâs plagiarism of Michelle Obama was just about the least offensive thing one heard from the podium on Monday night. The rest was a near orgy of hatred, racism, sexism and ethnocentrism. Rudy Giuliani has always presented himself as an avatar of âlaw and order.â This has been a conservative mantra for half a century. We always suspected it was code for the suppression of African-Americans and now we know. Ditto all this talk of âJudeo-Christianâ values. Itâs a code for Islamophobia and oppression. And the attacks on Hillary Clinton sound an awful lot as if they are being spoken by people who simply cannot accept the fact that women have the same rights and capabilities as men. And to their eternal shame, most in the media ran interference for this confidence game, only to be blindsided when Trump demonstrated that it had always been a charade.
Listen to the speeches by the Republican heavyweights who have agreed to take the stage in Cleveland; not one of them has put forth an actual idea that makes sense in terms of how to govern the United States. Thatâs because governance has long ceased being relevant to the Republican coalition. What holds it together is nothing more than nostalgia for a more oppressive America and resentment toward those who refuse, any longer, to sit on the back of bus.
My only response to this is to say that it is what I’ve been seeing all along, for years…from my window into the world that is my “quiet redneck mountain town” of Banjoville, GA. It is frightening as hell. I cannot lean back and think this election is a done deal. That folks will vote for Hillary and that she is a foregone conclusion to win in November. I am truly scared Trump could pull it out, and the stupidity will put him in office…and we will once again see the white lights of supremacy that shone in Nuremberg those years ago…brightening the dark black skies over America…to make America Great Again…to make America Safe Again. (As the RNC message was on Monday.)
Fucking hell.
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I always wondered about that…if luck is supposed to be a feminine representation, like a boat or a car is referred to as a “she” …then why the fuck does luck have to be thought of in terms of as being a woman?
The post is late today because I spent the last couple of hours trying to remember the name of this novel I read back some 17 years ago. (It took me that long to Google terms like, Indian authors, books about women, phrases about being unfortunate to be born a woman…) Looking up on Goodreads, at title after title of hundreds of books, just to find this one…
What the Body Remembers by  Shauna Singh Baldwin. 1st ed. Published 1999 by N.A. Talese in New York . (Open Library)
…so that I could put up the first few paragraphs of the prologue here in the beginning of the post today.
If your click on the images you will see them in a much larger size…please do because what is written there is so poignant.
Now that that is put out there for y’all to think about…a few links on luck.
Luck be a lady, hell yeah! You bet, only best not be a black lady…I mean a black man….that is, a black Number 2 big shot from the Georgia Republican Party…trying to get into the meet and greet with the GOP’s “ASSumed” presidential candidate.
A Georgia Republican Party official was thrown out of a Donald Trump event last week, according to two sources.
Michael McNeely, the first vice chair of the Georgia Republicans, was escorted out of Atlantaâs Fox Theatre by Secret Service after being told there was âno more room for youâ by Trump campaign state director Brandon Phillips, according to a party official briefed on the incident. The official requested anonymity said they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the party.
This morning, McNeely sent us the following statement:
Last week, an event staffer and I had a discussion about room access. Security surrounding a Presidential candidate being what it is, he couldnât relent from protocol and I left the building.
There were no ill feelings. Weâre looking forward to defeating Hillary Clinton and working together to elect Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. Efforts made by the media to question our unity is nonsense and has no basis in fact.
Brandon Phillips, Trumpâs go-to in Georgia, called it a security issue and said the Secret Service officers were being vigilant.
Hereâs why the incident is worth noting: The Trump event at the Fox specifically emphasized an appeal to black voters in Georgia and elsewhere. As first vice president, McNeely is the ranking African-American in the Georgia GOP hierarchy.
That is how the Atlanta Journal-Constitution saw it anyway…if you want to read how the other news folks saw the slight, you can take a look here:
I like that second headline…which is from Raw Story.
Seriously, I know it is a horrible show of racism, at least to me it is, but when I first read the article about what happened backstage at the Trump Rally here in Atlanta Georgia the past week…I thought, of course! What did this dude expect? “Welcome son!” “Marry my daughter?”
Rick Tyler, an independent Congressional candidate for Tennesseeâs 3rd district, is facing a boycott of his restaurant business after he advertised his candidacy with racist billboard messages like âMake America White Again.â
On Saturday at a Donald J. Trump rally in Phoenix, Arizona, an over enthusiastic supporter of the real estate mogul had some choice words that were captured on film. Specifically, âGo fucking cook my burrito, bitch!â
Video at the link of course.
The Smoking Gunhas identified that delightful man in the video that is rapidly going viral: Zackary Fisher. Along with the name ID, the site provided this strangely specific description of the man who, at one point, casually offers, âI f***ed your whole fucking family with my big c**k,â in the video.
When not loudly lecturing others about tortillas, burritos, and the size of his penis, Fisher enjoys working out at LA Fitness, hiking, and spending time with his pit bull. Fisher has also fought in MMA matches, but it appears his career in the cage was derailed by injury.
The massacre at a popular gay nightclub shows no one yet has “found the magic bullet” to prevent Americans from being inspired to violence by jihadist propaganda on the Internet, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Tuesday as she visited a city still shaken by the shootings.
“We were able to break down the noisy signals to isolate a simple vertical motion pattern that curiously straddled the San Andreas fault,” researcher Samuel Howell said.
For the first time, scientists have produced a computer image showing huge sections of California rising and sinking around the San Andreas fault.
The vertical movement is the result of seismic strain that will be ultimately released in a large earthquake.
The San Andreas fault is Californiaâs longest earthquake fault, and one of the stateâs most dangerous. Scientists have long expected that parts of California are rising â and other parts sinking â around the fault in a way that is ongoing, very subtle and extremely slow.
Such vertical movement makes a lot of sense. California sits on the border of two gigantic tectonic plates â the Pacific and North American â that are constantly grinding past each other.
Large sections of land on either side of the San Andreas fault are moving up or down every year by a few millimeters, a major form of motion that researchers report in a new study that sheds light on the mechanics of the famous fault line.
Compared to the more predictable horizontal movement of the fault in between earthquakes, the vertical motion of the land on either side of the fault has been more mysterious, according to the study. The pattern the researchers found was hard to detect in the messy data, which came from an array of GPS sensors, so the scientists used a statistical method to make sense of it.
The up and down motion occurred in patches of land so bigâ about 125 miles wideâ Â they can be described on the county level. Santa Barbara County, San Luis Obispo County, and a big section of San Bernardino County are rising at a few millimeters per year, The Los Angeles Times reported, while Orange County, San Diego County, and a large part of the Los Angeles Basin are sinking.
Hibberd named the snake Monty (the python) and called a snake catcher to have him removed.
âIts frigging huge! Have it locked in bedroom waiting for help……my life is never boring,â Hibberd told friends on Facebook.
The snake has lived in Hibberdâs home for 10 years and finally âtried to upgrade to the master bedroom,â the BBC reports.
Now, it hasn’t lived inside the home like a pet….according to that BBC report:
‘Big fatso’
Ms Hibberd said a friend staying at her house first noticed the gargantuan reptile’s presence.
“I guess he came in to have a bit of a feed or say hello, or he’s gone a bit senile. I’ve no idea,” she told the BBC.
But she thinks he has been living in the roof of her house for many years.
Monty has now been transferred to a sewage pond within the Cassowary Coast Regional Council area, where it is hoped he will take care of a rat infestation.
“I guess Monty has gone to snake heaven and he’s going to be this big fatso,” Ms Hibberd said.
Videos are at the link, I just watched them to hear the cussing, and to see how calm this woman is when a snake this big is in her house.
That is all for me today, what’s lucky in your neck of the woods?
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Yesterday was the IDAHO | DAHOT International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. With that in mind let’s take a look at the scene surrounding LGTB issues this week, especially the last few days. As y’all know, it is a “fluid ” situation, one of constant assault from the same forces I discussed in my last post Wednesday Reads: Buckets of what? | Sky Dancing. They are same hypocritical basturds who want to control every aspect of a woman’s autonomy, spirit, and cognitive functions. Shit…we are just going to have to get to it, right?
On May 17, Americans and people around the world mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia by reaffirming the dignity and inherent worth of all people, regardless of who they love or their gender identity.
Our nation is committed to the principle that all people should be treated fairly and with respect. Advancing this goal has long been a cornerstone of American diplomacy, and I am proud that my Administration has made advancing the human rights of LGBT individuals a specific focus of our engagement around the world. I am also proud of the great strides that our nation has made at home in recent years, including that we now have marriage equality as a result of last yearâs landmark Supreme Court decision.
At the same time, there is much work to be done to combat homophobia and transphobia, both at home and abroad.â In too many places, LGBT individuals grow up forced to conceal or deny who they truly are for fear of persecution, discrimination, and violence. All nations and all communities can, and must, do better. Fortunately, human rights champions and good citizens around the world continue to strive towards this goal every day by lifting up the simple truth that LGBT rights are human rights. The United States honors their work and will continue to support them in their struggle for human dignity.
âToday, I join Canadians â and people around the world â to recognize the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia.
âEveryone deserves to live free of stigma, persecution, and discrimination â no matter who they are or whom they love. Today is about ensuring that all people â regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity â feel safe and secure, and empowered to freely express themselves.
âOn this important day, I encourage all Canadians to raise awareness, and mobilize to end the violence, prejudice, and judgement faced by LGBTQ2 persons.
âAs a society, we have taken many important steps toward recognizing and protecting the legal rights for the LGBTQ2 community â from enshrining equality rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the passage of the Civil Marriage Act. There remains much to be done, though. Far too many people still face harassment, discrimination, and violence for being who they are. This is unacceptable.
âTo do its part, the Government of Canada today will introduce legislation that will help ensure transgender and other gender-diverse people can live according to their gender identity, free from discrimination, and protected from hate propaganda and hate crimes.
âToday, let us unite in a global celebration of diversity, and reaffirm our commitment to unequivocally defend LGBTQ2 rights as human rights. We will never stop fighting for a safer, more equal, and more just world for all of our children.â
According to multiple reports, Mexican President Enrique PeĂąa Nieto has proposed legalizing same-sex marriage across the entire country. Should Mexico recognize same-sex marriages at the national level, it would join the United States and Canada as the only North American nations to do so. Nieto’s proposal comes as part of a string of socially liberal policy ideas from the 49-year-old president, including the legalization of medical marijuana and an overhaul of the country’s war on drugs.
In whatâs sure to be part of a growing trend, a young woman in a Walmart restroom Friday was treated to a stern anti-transgender scolding from a self-appointed member of the Moral Police in Danbury, Connecticut. AimĂŠe Toms, a 22-year-old college student from Naugatuck, was washing her hands when a complete stranger hissed âYouâre disgusting!â and âYou donât belong here!â Toms, you see, has really short hair and was wearing a baseball cap, which was enough to convince the sharp-eyed Walmart shopper that Toms had to be one of those filthy transgender people using the ladiesâ biffy, endangering The Children and ruining America. Toms posted a fine video rant about the experience to Facebook Friday evening, and the video quickly went viral, with nearly 40,000 views since it went up. We have to say we like the cut of her jib. Toms introduces the video with this brief caption:
If it really takes me pulling up my shirt and showing someone I grew these boobs myself for them to leave me alone in a restroom, I donât want to live on this planet anymore.
Students in North Georgia are the targets of the latest transphobic outcry.
Parents in Fannin County, organized by school resource officer Anthony Walden, rallied last week against a policy supporting transgender students using bathrooms that align with their gender identity, instead of their sex assigned at birth.
Parents packed the Thursday school board meeting to decry the policy, which stems from federal government guidance, with media reports of anywhere from one to three hundred people in attendance.
âWe could stand to lose 3.5 million dollars, thatâs federal money,â school attorney Lynn Doss toldFox 5 News.
Following the egregious N.C. âbathroom bill,â the federal government issued a letter to schools urging them to allow transgender students to use restrooms and other facilities that correspond with their gender identity and not their sex assigned at birth.
N.C. and Gov. Pat McCrory are facing a lawsuit from the federal government over HB 2, with the Dept. of Justice making clear that transphobic bathroom policies are discriminatory and a violation of studentâs civil rights.
So much love to Loretta Lynch for this: âLet me also speak directly to the transgender community itselfâŚno matter how isolated, no matter how afraid, and no matter how alone you may feel todayâŚwe see you, we stand with you, and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward.â
I think you can tell the direction this article is taking….
School resource officer Walden called transgender people âpervertsâ and compared them to pedophiles, during public comment that received applause multiple times.
Transphobic statements abounded during the three hours of public comment. Parents and local leaders encouraged the school board to forego the federal dollars, threatening to remove their kids from school.
âWeâre going to do everything we can to stop this, and if not, then us moms are going to come home and teach our kids like it used to be,â Parent Angel Chancey said.
âAsk the question what would Jesus have me do in this situation,â said Matthew McDaniel, a pastor at First Baptist Church. âWe need to stand on Godâs truth in this perverse situation.â
Speaker David Ralston, who represents the area, even waded in, sending a letter to Ga. Sens. Johnny Isakson and David Purdue asking them to get involved.
Calling it âa vast overreach of federal authority,â Ralston asks them to âtake appropriate action to protect our students and our local educators from the heavy hand of the federal government.â
Well, he certainly doesnât seem interested in protecting transgender students, and that does not bode well for continued âreligious freedomâ rabble-rousing during next yearâs legislative session.
Have I mentioned how much I hate the people up here in Banjoville. Fannin is the county next door…so they are our Banjoneighbors.
State Sen. Steve Gooch (R-51), Senate Majority Whip, is calling on Georgia’s top officials to take a firm stand against President Barack Obama’s letter sent to school systems Friday with guidelines allowing transgender students to use bathrooms matching the gender they identify with.
“We’re asking the governor and lieutenant governor to look at the president’s policy initiative that he announced this week that basically threatens local governments with withholding their funds for their local schools,” Gooch said Tuesday. “We think that’s a wrong direction for our country. We shouldn’t be controlling local school boards and dictating them and holding this over their head.”
Gooch, of Lumpkin County, briefly answered questions during Tuesday afternoon’s Helen City Commission meeting.
Mike Webb is a conservative candidate for the United States Congress (VA-8) and heâs hoping to bring âresponsiveness and accountabilityâ to Washington, D.C. From hiscampaign announcement:
âIf we succeed in winning this race as a conservative Republican in the most liberal district in the nation and the most Democratic in the South, that will be a real revolution that will have national implications,â he said in a press release.
He is campaigning with a hands-on approach, insisting he does all of his own social media:
Webb claims that many residents are looking for responsiveness and accountability from their elected and appointed leaders. âOne way to do that is to personally respond on social media. Talk and engage with people. Joke and chide. Engage in dialogue. That is what it is all about.â
Unfortunately for Mike Webb, heâs probably now wishing he had someone running his social media. He shared a screenshot of his computer screen while trying to make a point (that was partial conspiracy theory)Â about trying to find employment and he forgot to close out a couple of tabs:
Oh, myâŚ..
Oh, my! Fans of Mike Webbâs Facebook page were quick to point out that the two tabs above led to two porn sites. Needless to say, fans were amused:
Stephen Carroll Hey, that’s probably why you had so many viruses and couldn’t make your FEC filing.
Christopher Allard Oh my good lord! That’s AWESOME!!! Way to go Mike! You posted a screen shot of your computer and left the PORN SITES up??? Wow, ranger that bud! This is definitely going viral!
At least 5 hours after the original post, it remains on this Facebook page. So much for his pledge for responsiveness! The post will no doubt be deleted in time, but it can currently be seen here.
I had to quote the entire post there, it was too unbelievable and fucking prefect not to.
Two Boston brothers who beat and urinated on a homeless Mexican man, then told police “Donald Trump was right: All these illegals need to be deported,” were sentenced to prison on Monday.
Picking out single words in a flow of speech is no easy task and, according to linguists, to succeed in doing it the brain might use statistical methods. A group of scientists has applied a statistics-based method for word segmentation and measured its efficacy on natural language, in nine different languages, to discover that linguistic rhythm plays an important role.
Have you ever racked your brains trying to make out even a single word of an uninterrupted flow of speech in a language you hardly know at all? It is naĂŻve to think that in speech there is even the smallest of pauses between one word and the next (like the space we conventionally insert between words in writing): in actual fact, speech is almost always a continuous stream of sound. However, when we listen to our native language, word “segmentation” is an effortless process. What are, linguists wonder, the automatic cognitive mechanisms underlying this skill? Clearly, knowledge of the vocabulary helps: memory of the sound of the single words helps us to pick them out. However, many linguists argue, there are also automatic, subconscious “low-level” mechanisms that help us even when we do not recognise the words or when, as in the case of very young children, our knowledge of the language is still only rudimentary. These mechanisms, they think, rely on the statistical analysis of the frequency (estimated based on past experience) of the syllables in each language.
I hope you enjoy that one BB…
Have a good day y’all, treat this as an open thread of course.
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Or Morning, if I actually got this post up in time.
Yesterday was a good day for Hillary and her supporters.
I am so lucky to have found out the outcome of the Nevada democrat caucuses from a text sent to me by Mona…I want to share it with you because I feel many of you are experiencing the same emotional exhaustion and disgust that this 2016 primary campaign has brought about.
As you can see…She knew just what to say.
Now for some links on the outcome of the races from yesterday:
Saturday was a night of political drama from Charleston to Caesarâs Palace, as results rolled in from the Republican primary in South Carolina and the Democratic caucuses in Las Vegas.
As the dust settles, whoâs on the up, and who is left licking their wounds?
WINNERS
Businessman Donald Trump
It was a massive night â âhuge,â as he might put it himself â for the business mogul. Trump trounced the field in South Carolina, his closest rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz trailing 10 points in his wake.
Trump has won two out of the three Republican contests to date and is the undeniable favorite to claim the nomination.
[…]
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Clintonâs win in the Nevada caucuses provided her with some much-needed stability after she was rocked by a heavy defeat at the hands of Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire.
Sandersâs supporters must now realize just how steep a climb they face if their candidate is to wrest the nomination away from the longtime front-runner.
Donald Trump posted a decisive victory Saturday night in South Carolina, a conservative state that on its face should have been inhospitable to the New York billionaire, but was anything but when voters went to the polls.
And Hillary Clinton pulled off a badly needed win in Nevada, besting Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with an older, more diverse electorate in the state’s caucuses.
As we dive into the entrance and exit polling data, here’s four takeaways from the results.
I will post the four takeaways, you can read more about them at the link.
1. Evangelical voters have faith in Donald Trump
2. Republican voters like some of Trump’s most controversial proposals on banning Muslims
3. Political outsiders may have an advantage, but there’s a window for an establishment candidate like Marco Rubio
4. In Nevada, Clinton benefited from an older, more diverse electorate
Okay then.
As for the Hillary win, I think this may have been more of a factor:
Hillary Clinton built her victory over Sen. Bernie Sanders in Nevada on the strength of her support among women and minorities, the voting blocs that her campaign confidently predicts will carry her toward the Democratic nomination in the next several rounds of primaries.
According to a poll of voters entering caucus sites around the state, Clinton beat Sanders 57% to 41% among women. Sanders held a somewhat smaller lead among men, according to the entrance survey, conducted by Edison Research for the Associated Press and the major TV networks.
To compound Clinton’s margin, women made up well over half the turnout, the entrance poll found.
Clinton also established a big edge among nonwhite voters, while the two candidates closely split whites. Sanders won among younger whites, Clinton among their elders.
THE poll numbers and primary results so far tell a simple story: Younger Democratic women are mostly for Bernie Sanders; older women lean more toward Hillary Clinton.
The mothers-versus-daughters narrative, long an election-year trope, is particularly pronounced now, and tinged with stereotypes on both sides. The idealistic but ungrateful naĂŻfs who think sexism is a thing of the past and believe, as Mr. Sanders recently said, that âpeople should not be voting for candidates based on their genderâ are seemingly battling the pantsuited old scolds prattling on about feminism.
Instead, the reality may be another kind of simple numbers game: More time in a sexist world, and particularly in the workplace, radicalizes women.
Dolores Huerta, a civil rights leader who has endorsed Hillary Clinton, said Saturday that Bernie Sanders supporters shouted her down when she tried to offer Spanish-language translations at a Las Vegas caucus location — including by chanting “English-only” — ahead of Clinton’s win in the Nevada Democratic caucuses.
“Shouting ‘English-only’ — that is completely against the spirit of everything that we’re working for,” Huerta told The Huffington Post in a phone interview.
Many of the caucus-goers were workers who spoke only Spanish, so she volunteered to do translation, Huerta said. But she said some Sanders supporters began to yell “No, no, no” and “English only,” and in the end, they went without translation entirely.
“To deprive these voters at this crucial time of having a translation of what was going on — this is something they need to know what’s taking place,” she said. “The caucus is a kind of complicated procedure. So the Bernie supporters would rather them not have any sort of translation rather than have someone like myself, who just happened to be a Hillary supporter, do the translation.”
On Saturday, Bernie Sanders supporters chanted âEnglish only!â at a longtime labor and Latina activist, two neutral sources unaffiliated with either campaign told BuzzFeed News.
I offered to translate & Bernie supporters chanted English only! We fought too long & hard to be silenced Si Se Puede! #ImwithHer#NVcaucus
The Georgia state Senate has passed a religious freedom bill that critics fear could lead to anti-gay discrimination, boycotts and billions of dollars of lost revenue.
The Republican-backed legislation â passed Friday by a 38-14 margin that fell along party lines â is a hybrid of two bills.
The First Amendment Defense Act has received the most criticism of the two. It allows religious organizations to deny services if they cite “a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction” against same-sex marriage.
The bill would apply to locally funded and state-funded nonprofit organizations such as hospitals, homeless shelters and adoption centers.
“This bill protects the constitutional rights of individuals and faith-based organizations,”said Republican state Sen. Greg Kirk, chief sponsor of the legislation. “It takes nothing away from same-sex couples or members of the LGBT community.
“It is a live-and-let-live bill.”
In other words it is another discrimination bill….I hate these ratfucking republicans.
…the broad language of the bill opens the door for same-sex discrimination, as well as discrimination against people of any orientation who have sex out of wedlock.
“Kirk really thinks that allowing anyone to discriminate against anyone makes the bill fair,” Robbie Medwed, a local gay-rights activist, wrote in a column for Atlanta magazine, Creative Loafing.
Georgia business leaders also criticized the bill, fearing it could lead to costly tourism boycotts and negative publicity. Some also expressed a desire to avoid the type of negative publicity the state of Indiana received when it passed its Religious Freedom Restoration Act last year.
âWe believe that treating all Georgians and visitors fairly is essential to maintaining Georgiaâs strong brand as the premier home for talented workers, growing businesses, entrepreneurial innovation, and a thriving travel and tourism industry,â the Metro Atlanta Chamber said in a statement.
In response to the bill, a number of major Georgia-based businesses, including Coca-Cola, Delta, Home Depot, UPS and Arby’s, joined the Georgia Prospers coalition earlier this year, promising to promote diversity in their workforces.
The other half of the bill is the so-called “Pastor Protection Act,” which ensures that clergy will not be forced to perform same-sex marriages. The act was met with little objection.
The combined bill will now go the House of Representatives for approval.
Georgiaâs state senate is considering a âreligious libertyâ bill that would make it easier to discriminate against LGBT people by, as Americans United explains, allowing âany individual or âfaith-basedâ business, non-profit entity, or taxpayer-funded organization to ignore any law that conflicts with their religious beliefs about marriage.â
This means, according to AU, that âany person, business, or taxpayer-funded organization could refuse anyone else rights, services, and benefits because they are part of an interracial couple; are part of an interfaith couple; are a single mother; are part of a same-sex couple; are divorced; are remarried; live or have lived with a partner without being married; or have had sex outside of marriage at any time in their life.â
The broad scope of the bill, which combines a House-passed measure with an even broader Senate bill, has alarmed many observers, including state Sen. Emanuel Jones.
In a debate over the bill today, Jones asked its sponsor, Sen. Greg Kirk, if the Ku Klux Klan would count as a faith-based organization protected under the law.
âI guess they could,â Kirk answered, adding, âI donât know what would stop them.â
When Jones asked Kirk if that seemed like a problem to him, Kirk responded that it did not because the bill âcertainly isnât directedâ at the KKK.
Kirk then compared the KKK to BeyoncĂŠâs âtribute to the Black Panthersâ at the Super Bowl, saying that the Black Panthers would also be protected under the legislation.
Now a story of a major fuck-up. This will have you laughing like hell…
A Facebook group called Stop Safe Schools (a peculiar name) instructed their members to buy every ticket available to an annual LGBT-friendly high school dance so that no LGBT teenagers could attend.
Members of the anti-gay Facebook group apparently did buy a significant number of tickets, but there’s a glaring problem with their diabolical plan.
Unforunately for the anti-gay group of haters there are an unlimited number of “tickets,” which are really just donations to fund the dance, which is open to all. “Everyone is welcome regardless of identity, allies included, as long as everyone is being friendly and respectful!”
Because the anti-gay group so generously gave their money (over $45,000) to the Minus 18 organization which hosts the event, attendance will be free for everyone this year.
Jesus thanks you.
It occurs to me that even if their plan had succeeded, they still would have effectively donated a significant amount of money to the organization. It’s not clear how that benefits the anti-gay group or harms the organization. Ultimately, they would have only inconvenienced and insulted the students who planned to attend.
Over $45K that is some big time Gay Jesus love there. Good for them!
Americans like to think they are #1 in everything, but when it comes to education, the U.S. quickly loses boasting rights. Math and science are particularly rough: U.S. ranks 28th in the world for those subjects. Although we may be a developed nation, when education is broken down by state, we aren’t all that different from countries that are more economically challenged.
HomeSnacks.com used information from the U.S. high school graduation rates from the U.S. Census and compared them against the education index of each country from the United Nations Development Program.
The result? A map of the U.S. with each state renamed as the country that resembles their level of education.
How much a political leader smiles reflects their particular country’s cultural values related to how people express themselves, a Stanford scholar has found.
âThe print editions of our newspapers, even as they continue their inexorable decline, are such fixtures of ordinary life â sold in corner shops, abandoned on trains, pasted across the windows of empty properties, and still read everywhere â that their disappearance seems as unthinkable as the disappearance of the church.
You neednât buy one to retain a romantic, unexamined sense that their raucous daily appearance is one of the vital signs of the nation. If so, it may soon seem as if all of our hearts are beating a little slower.â
My father, who liked to confide that âcomputers will never catch onâ, regretted the passing of steam trains. Although we demand progress we tend to regret what we leave behind.
A smile of recognition slowly spreads across the elderly manâs face.
âA great goal by Cruyff against Reina,â he says, in a voice which strengthens with increasing conviction. âGreat cross from the right. And then â with his instep.
âHis instep,â the man repeats, gesturing with his fingers and now smiling broadly as he remembers the famous back-post volley scored by Johan Cruyff for Barcelona past the AtlĂŠtico Madrid goalkeeper, Miguel Reina, in December 1973.
More than four decades on from that goal at the Camp Nou the lifelong Barça fan is one of a group of patients with Alzheimerâs disease who are flicking through the pages of specially produced editions of the Spanish football magazine LĂbero.
The patients are being helped by a project called FĂştbol v Alzheimer organised by the Madrid-based LĂbero and the Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona.
The idea for the project came from a 2014 study produced at the universityâs FundaciĂł Salut i Envelliment (Foundation Health and Ageing). This research found that talking about football helped stimulate the memory, attention and mood of people with Alzheimerâs and other forms of cognitive deterioration.
CNNâs Jake Tapper askedDonald Trump this morning if he really thinks he has a chance to win over minorities given his support among white supremacists.
Tapper said many Republican leaders donât see Trump winning enough minorities to lead the party to victory, âgiven the fact there are white supremacist groups and individuals like that who support you,some of whomyouâve even retweeted.â
Trump dismissed his retweets of white supremacists and made it clear he knows nothing about the white supremacist groups supporting him.
Yeah, he knows nothing, nothing about the KKK endorsement.
Billionaire bigot Donald Trump won the South Carolina primary Saturday with about 32.5 percent of the vote. He was about ten points ahead of his two closes rivals, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who more or less tied at between 22 and 23 percent each.
Trump did much better than his rivals with men, with over-45 voters and with the less educated. He even outdid Cruz with regard to the evangelical vote (self-described evangelicals were 3/4s of Republican SC voters this year, up from 65% in 2012).
But perhaps one unexpected indication as to why he won is Trumpâs strident hatred of Muslims. Some 75% of GOP primary voters in South Carolina support his bizarre and unconstitutional idea of banning Muslims from traveling to the United States. That is nearly twice the national average on this issue (46%) and more than the average among Republicans nationally (66%).
A sounding by Public Policy Polling found that SC GOP voters supporting Trump are outliers among Republicans in that state. Some 80% of them want to ban Muslims from traveling to the US, and about a third of Trump supporters want to ban gays from coming here as well. (That was twice the percentage among SC Repubicans in general). Among Trump supporters, 62 percent want to create a database to track US Muslims, and 40% want to ban mosques. 44% of Trump supporters want to ban the practice of Islam entirely (Not sure why 4% of these stupid jingoists want to allow mosques but not Muslims). About 38% of Trump voters said they wish the South had won the Civil War, as opposed to 30% of SC Republicans overall.
The evidence therefore suggests that xenophobia and hatred of Muslims, as well as a yearning for the white supremacist Confederacy, are more common among Trump supporters than among SC Republicans in general. And, it may well be that the margin of racism accounts for Trumpâs win.
Moreover, a third of GOP voters in South Carolina see terrorism as the number one issue facing the US, while 28% think it is the economy and 27% are worried about government spending. That is, the hatred of Muslims seems tied to security concerns rather to immigration, and immigration per se is not a big concern there. Likely the large number of southern men who spend some time in the military is one explanation for this unusual concern with terrorism. After the Paris and San Bernardino attacks by fringe radical Muslims, the percentage of Americans who named terrorism as the number one problem jumpedfrom a few percentage points to 16% last December. So South Carolinian Republicans are twice as worried about that issue as most Americans, and are a third more worried about it than Republicans nationally (24%) as of last December. (When there arenât attacks for a while, the general US percentages on this issue have been slipping to single digits).
It seems like South Carolina is a perfect example of the Southern State. Read more at the link…please.
Since Boston Boomer started her post yesterday with a song, I think it is fitting to end my post with a song today. Reflecting on the Win for Trump in South Carolina….
Granted it is an anti-war song…but I feel very much like those soldiers. This battle against the GOP…a fight that is beyond my control. While everywhere the partying continues…I can only see the ship heading towards disaster.
Ceasars Palace…a morning glory…Hillary.
For me, maybe that is our only hope? She has to win.
This is an open thread.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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