Sunday Reads: Bitter Bigguns

I know that I have posted this picture before, but it has special meaning today….

GUNKISS • gunkiss: Her Derby name is “Bomba” I wanna make…

gunkiss:

Her Derby name is “Bomba”

_{I wanna make a derby comic pretty bad and I might just use her as char, I loved drawing her. *Printing it so I can have it as motivation for the comic*}

Many body positive blogs have been reblogging this today making it skyrocket in notes. I just wanna thank you for the comments, the notes and asked I’ve received and welcome to all new followers. I really appreciate it!

I’ve been asked regarding having this pic as a print and t-shirt, etc

You can get merch with this pic here on my Society6 store =)

Again thank you so much ♥⚡!

Innit lovely? She is so fuckingfantastic, I had to buy some “merch” with this roller babe on it…

Ok, that is enough diversion for now, let’s get to the bitterness:

I appreciate Sarah Kendzior more than I can say, but honestly, I do dread her twitter post as well…because she is so spot on. It seems like you can go back through her feed and find just how prescient her threads have been:

In October 2017, U.S. Army Sergeant La David Johnson died in a hail of gunfire while fighting off militants in Niger. Soon after, his widow, Myeshia Johnson, received a call from President Donald Trump. After coldly telling her that her husband “knew what he signed up for,” Trump failed to remember the slain soldier’s name, leaving Johnson shocked and crying.

“I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband’s name, and that’s what hurt me the most, because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country, why can’t you remember his name?” she said.

As the U.S.’s deranged president threatens to go to war in Syria and possibly beyond, it is worth re-examining how Trump views the troops whose lives he is putting on the line. For all his macho posturing and exhortations about his beloved generals, Trump–a draft dodger who referred to avoiding STDs as “my personal Vietnam”–has long treated veterans and their loved ones with contempt. This contempt is not rooted in an aversion to the military as an institution–Trump bloated the military budget and has been striking the Middle East while threatening North Korea and other states–but an aversion to the concept of service to one’s nation itself.

Serving one’s country is a sacrifice, and sacrifice terrifies Trump. The idea that one would risk oneself–out of love, loyalty, or duty–is alien to him. Sacrifice, to Trump, is a sucker’s bet, a gamble beyond his comprehension–but one he is all too willing to let other Americans make.

[…]

In July 2015, Trump insulted John McCain, who was tortured as a military prisoner in Vietnam. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump scoffed. “I like people who weren’t captured.” The comment shocked the audience, but it is completely in line with Trump’s worldview. What offends Trump about McCain is not that he was captured, but that he was willing to risk being captured–especially for a cause greater than himself.

This is not to say Trump does not thrive on disaster. He began his career profiting off the financial ruin of New York City (“When bad times come, then I’ll get whatever I want,” he told Barbara Walters in the 1980s) and continued to spout this philosophy before his presidential run (“You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you’ll have, you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great,” he told FOX News in February 2014.) Trump loves a catastrophe if he is its beneficiary.

[…]

…Trump, with his visceral revulsion at the concept of service, is still the greatest danger. It is Trump whose past has finally caught up with him; it is Trump who stands the most to lose; it is Trump who unilaterally can launch nuclear weapons. Trump has shown that human beings have little inherent value to him. If Trump senses he may have to make a personal sacrifice, he will sacrifice the world instead.

This is a post from April 2018. I think Sarah resent the link today because it makes a point about the latest events from the past week. Even with the news and confirmation that Russia fucked with our election…tRump is still going forward with the planned one on one meeting with his handler Putin. (I mean that with all sincerity.)

Here are some signs from London’s protest of Trump:

View this post on Instagram

London!! You did not disappoint .. .thanks for your resistance and the great signs .. 🇬🇧#nationaldisgrace #americanidiot #worlddestroyer

A post shared by Jill Vedder (@j__vedder) on Jul 13, 2018 at 1:12pm PDT

If you click that link and go directly to the instagram site, you can scroll through about 6 more pictures in that particular post. Or you can just more your arrow up to the middle edge of the picture above, and you should be able to scroll through the images as well….

Brits Don’t Mince Words: The Most Irreverent and Radical Signs From UK’s Historic Anti-Trump Protest

Despite the American corporate media’s efforts to obscure the radical, irreverent, and often obscene signs on display across the United Kingdom on Friday, the disgust hundreds of thousands of Britons feel toward Donald Trump and Trumpism could not be suppressed as they took to the streets en masse to show their opposition to the U.S. president’s hate-filled policies.

Below, we present some of the greatest signs from Friday’s demonstrations, which “drastically exceeded” the expectations of organizers in both size and spirit.

I think that one above is my favorite….

As Trump Visited the U.K., Protestors Marched in Very British Style – The Atlantic

LONDON—The first protestors began assembling on Portland Place, just outside the BBC’s London headquarters, on Friday morning. They carried signs. “FEED HIM TO THE CORGIS,” said one. “TANGERINE TYRANT,” read another. “BOLLOCKS TO TRUMP.” “IKEA HAS BETTER CABINETS.” “TRUMP IS A TOSSER.” “I HAD TO FIX MY PRINTER FOR THIS.”

This image is floating around my Facebook groups:

Wow, is that a joke?

Notice the ZTA sticker on the back of the car window? Zeta Tau Alpha Fraternity | The official website of ZTA

Here is another picture making the rounds:

As far as “jokes” are concerned, these next few links are not jokes:

Michigan judge rules kids don’t have a fundamental right to literacy | TheHill

A Michigan judge ruled last week that children do not have a fundamental right to learn how to read and write.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Public Counsel, the nation’s largest public interest law firm, on behalf of Detroit students that sought to hold state authorities, including Gov. Rick Snyder (R), accountable for what plaintiffs alleged were systemic failures depriving children of their right to literacy, according to the Detroit Free Press.

“I’m shocked,” said Ivy Bailey, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, the newspaper reported. “The message that it sends is that education is not important. And it sends the message that we don’t care if you’re literate or not.”

The suit also sought fixes to crumbling schools that, among other measures, Detroit Public Schools Community District officials reportedly said would amount to more than $500 million.

The state had argued for dismissing the suit, with the city’s lawyers saying local officials are “all too familiar with illiteracy’s far reaching effects.”

“Widespread illiteracy has hampered the City’s efforts to connect Detroiters with good-paying jobs; to fill vacancies on its police force, and to grow its tax base,” said lawyers for the city. “Illiteracy, moreover, has greatly exacerbated the effects of intergenerational poverty in Detroit.”

So, here is the decision:

U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy III acknowledged the importance of literacy in his ruling on Friday in a 40-page opinion.

“Plainly, literacy — and the opportunity to obtain it — is of incalculable importance,” Murphy wrote. “As plaintiffs point out, voting, participating meaningfully in civic life, and accessing justice require some measure of literacy.”

But he concluded that those points “do not necessarily make access to literacy a fundamental right,” adding that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the past that the importance of service “does not determine whether it must be regarded as fundamental.”

Wait a minute…wasn’t there a fucking PSA campaign called, “Reading is Fundemental.”

Home | RIF.org

Oh no, it was an actual charity, the biggest one no less, founded in 1966!

Reading Is Fundamental is committed to a literate America by inspiring a passion for reading among all children, providing quality content to make an impact and engaging communities in the solution to give every child the fundamentals for success. As the nation’s largest children’s literacy non-profit, Reading Is Fundamental maximizes every contribution to ensure all children have the ability to read and succeed.

Click the link up top to find out more information and see ways you can get involved in the programs.

In other reading news: South Carolina police object to high-school reading list | Books | The Guardian

A police union in South Carolina has challenged the inclusion of Angie Thomas’s multiple award-winning novel about police brutality, The Hate U Give, on a school’s summer reading list, describing it as “almost an indoctrination of distrust of police”.

The intervention from the Fraternal Order of Police Tri-County Lodge #3 came after Wando high school’s ninth-grade class was asked to read one of eight novels over the summer holidays. Two of the titles upset the police union: The Hate U Give, which follows a teenage girl after she witnesses the shooting of her unarmed best friend by a police officer, and Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely’s All American Boys, which sees a teenage boy trying to overcome his distrust of the police after he is wrongly suspected of shoplifting and then beaten by an officer.

Hey, check out the name of the cop leading the objection, ironic?

In fact, there are eight books on the reading list, only two of which tackle police brutality. Thomas’s book was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, but also includes a character, the main protagonist’s uncle, who is a black police officer and positive role model. It has won prizes including the Waterstones children’s book award, while All American Boys is the recipient of the Walter Dean Myers award for outstanding children’s literature.

You can read more at the link above, here is a screenshot of Blackmon from the local news link:

Then of course….there’s Maude:

Biden: McConnell blocked Russia warning – CNN Video

Former Vice President Joe Biden claims that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blocked the Obama administration from warning the public about possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Anyway, that is all I have for today.

I am hoping to start working out and skating so that I can build up to becoming fresh meat at a roller derby somewhere. I have already picked my name out, Fanny Bigguns.

“Feel the Girthquake as Fanny Bigguns rolls on by….”

Yeah, my big ass should be able to block pretty darn good. And, it can maybe help get rid of all this angst I’ve been building up over the last few years.

This is an open thread.