Cats of the Louvre, a graphic novel by Taiyo Matsumoto
There are just 37 days remaining until election day, November 5. While Trump continues to display his growing cognitive issues as well as his ignorance of public policy, Kamala Harris has been making substantive appearances in which she intelligently spells out what she will do as president. Earlier in the week she spoke about her economic plans. Yesterday she visited the border in Arizona and gave a speech outlining her proposed immigration policies and attacking Trump’s failures.
Vice President Kamala Harris went on the offensive against former President Donald Trump on immigration Friday during her visit to the southern border in Arizona as she tries to turn a political vulnerability on its head.
Immigration has featured prominently in the 2024 presidential election, with polls showing voters placing more trust in Trump to handle the issue than Harris.
Democrats, grappling with years of border crises, have tried to gain ground by pointing to the bipartisan border measure that congressional Republicans blocked earlier this year after Trump came out against it. Harris on Friday lambasted Trump for his role in stymying that bill.
“It was the strongest border security bill we have seen in decades. It was endorsed by the Border Patrol union. And it should be in effect today, producing results in real time, right now, for our country,” she said at a rally in Douglas, a town on the US-Mexico border.
“But Donald Trump tanked it. He picked up the phone and called some friends in Congress and said, ‘Stop the bill,’” she said. “He prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem. And the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games and their personal political future.”
She said she would ask Congress to pass the measure if she is elected, and would sign it into law. She also laid out a series of proposals that she said were “not just about some rhetoric at a rally,” but would help stem the flow of migrants into the United States.
A bit more:
“Solutions are at hand if we focus on fixing a problem and not running on a problem,” Harris said.
She said she’d work with Congress to create a pathway to citizenship for “hardworking immigrants who have been here for years, for years, and deserve to have a system that works,” as well as “Dreamers” – undocumented immigrants brought into the United States as children, who are allowed to live and work in the US under an Obama-era program but generally cannot become citizens under current law.
“They are American in every way. But still, they do not have an earned pathway to citizenship. And this problem has gone unsolved at this point now for decades,” Harris said. “The same goes for farmworkers who ensure that we have food on our tables and sustain our agricultural industry – and they too have been in legal limbo for years because politicians have refused to come together and fix our broken immigration system.”
Earlier this year, Biden announced an executive action severely limiting the ability of migrants to seek asylum at the US southern border if they crossed unlawfully – a departure from decadeslong protocol. Immigrant advocates have likened the executive action to Trump-era policies.
The measure can be turned on and off and lifted when there’s a daily average of fewer than 1,500 encounters between ports of entry, among other criteria. It remains in place.
Homeland Security officials have credited the action for driving down border crossings to the lowest point since 2020.
The Washington Post: Harris, in visit to border, proposes new restrictions on immigration.
DOUGLAS, Ariz. — Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign on Friday proposed new border restrictions that would go further than the emergency rules the Biden administration deployed in June, making the announcement during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border Friday in an effort to confront one of her biggest political vulnerabilities.
By Taiyo Matsumoto
Harris’s proposed executive action would build on President Joe Biden’s current policy of essentially closing the U.S. asylum system unless illegal border crossings stay below 1,500 daily crossings for a week. Harris would lower that threshold and extend the period it must be met, advisers said, although exact figures were not immediately available.
The action might have a limited practical impact, at least in the short term, but the proposal appeared designed to send a message that Harris is taking a more assertive immigration posture than the administration in which she serves and that she is not ceding the issue to Donald Trump, who consistently scores higher marks among voters on border security and immigration.
In what her campaign had billed as a major speech in this community, which sits on the border, Harris also emphasized her support for an enforcement-heavy border security bill crafted by a bipartisan group of senators earlier this year. She decried Trump’s central role in derailing it, noting that he had urged Republicans in Congress to oppose the legislation.
“Donald Trump tanked it,” she said, standing amid six different signs that said in capital letters, “Border Security and Stability.”
“Because, you see, he prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” she added. “And the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games and their personal political future.”
Read more details at the WaPo link.
NPR: At the border in Arizona, Harris lays out a plan to get tough on fentanyl.
Vice President Harris walked along the U.S. border with Mexico on Friday alongside a stretch of border wall built during the Obama administration, talking with border officials about their work.
It was a photo op meant to illustrate that she supports border security — one of the biggest concerns voters have about Harris — and to try to defang criticism from her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump.
Later, she embraced a mother whose son died of a fentanyl overdose, and made her most extensive remarks to date on how she would address border security and immigration reform.
“I will reach across the aisle and I will embrace common sense approaches and new technologies to get the job done,” she said….
She said her experience as a prosecutor and attorney general gave her experience to tackle the fentanyl problem.
“I’ve seen tunnels with walls as smooth as the walls of your living room, complete with lighting and air conditioning, making very clear that it is about an enterprise that is making a whole lot of money in the trafficking of guns, drugs and human beings,” she said.
“Stopping transnational criminal organizations and strengthening our border is not new to me, and it is a long standing priority of mine. I have done that work, and I will continue to treat it as a priority when I am elected president of the United States,” Harris said.
Read more at NPR.
Trump very much has not been focusing on policy, and if you’ve paid attention to his rallies and other public appearances, you know that he’s simply not capable of doing so. Even though he was “president” for four years, he has learned nothing about how the government works or about serious issues. He is incapable of learning, and why the media keeps propping him up is a mystery. Here are a couple of “issues” raised by the Trump camp over the past couple of days.
The New York Times: Trump Threatens to Prosecute Google for Showing ‘Bad Stories’ About Him.
Former President Donald J. Trump threatened Friday to prosecute Google if he was elected to the presidency a second time, claiming that the tech company had been “illegally” showing only “bad stories” about him and only “good” ones about Vice President Kamala Harris.
By Taiyo Matsumoto
It was the latest instance of Mr. Trump threatening to prosecute his perceived opponents should he return to office. This month, he called for the prosecution of lawyers, political donors and operatives if they engaged in “unscrupulous behavior.”
Mr. Trump said at a news conference on Thursday that the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should be prosecuted in connection with the security lapses by which a mob of his own supporters attacked the Capitol during the transfer of presidential power on Jan. 6, 2021.
And on Friday, in Michigan, he called for an attorney general “somewhere, like in a Republican territory” to investigate Ms. Pelosi and her husband over reports that Mr. Pelosi had sold Visa stock ahead of the Justice Department’s filing an antitrust lawsuit against the company.
It was not immediately clear what prompted Mr. Trump to make the statement about Google on his social media website, Truth Social.
“It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Mr. Trump wrote.
“This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections,” he added. “If not, and subject to the Laws of our Country, I will request their prosecution, at the maximum levels, when I win the Election, and become President of the United States!”
Google said it did not manipulate search results to favor any candidate.
“Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of search for relevant and common search queries,” a Google spokesman said.
The New Republic: Trump Is So Mad About His Bad Press That He’s Unleashed a New Threat.
The source of Trump’s claim appears to be the right-wing Media Research Center, which published a report on Wednesday covered this week by Fox News and The New York Post.
MRC’s report “analyzed the Sept. 6 Google search results” for the terms “donald trump presidential race 2024” and “kamala harris presidential race 2024.” The group alleges that the results favored outlets with “a history of leftist bias,” and that, while Trump’s campaign website appeared sixth in his search results, Harris’s campaign website appeared third in hers.
Dismissing MRC’s report, a Google spokesperson told Fox, “Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries. This report looked at a single rare search term on a single day several weeks ago, and even for that search, both candidates’ websites ranked in the top results on Google.”
Trump’s Truth Social post recalls his previous claims that Google search results are biased against him, which Google has denied.
It is also yet another example of Trump promising to prosecute his perceived political foes if he retakes the White House. Earlier this month, for example, Trump posted to Truth Social that, if he wins, “those people that CHEATED”—such as “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials”—“will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences.”
This is what Trump is preoccupied with a month before the November election.
Oh, and JD Vance continues to say the quiet part aloud when it comes to women’s control over their own bodies and lives. Recently, close Trump adviser did it too.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo: Trump Camp Says State Menstrual Surveillance Programs are A-OK.
One of the most toxic and politically explosive parts of the current abortion rights debate is tied the complexities and perhaps inanities of leaving national abortion policy up to individual states. And a comment yesterday from Trump spokesman Jason Miller put the question right back into the center of the campaign.
By Taiyo Matsumoto
It’s not enough for many anti-abortion stalwarts to ban the procedure in their state. They want to ban legal drugs designed to induce abortion. They want to surveil and block women traveling to other states to obtain an abortion. One of the most threatening dimensions of these programs is that they threaten to make doctors and other medical professionals — who might give counsel on or simply know about a woman’s plans to obtain an abortion — responsible for reporting her actions. If you visit your OB-GYN and discuss traveling to another state to get an abortion, does your OB have to report you to the local sheriff? It applies to third parties who might assist a woman either in traveling to get an abortion or getting FDA-approved medications to induce an abortion at home. The cases we’ve already seen range the gamut from sheriff’s departments wanting to pull medical and travel records for evidence of pregnancies that ended for unexplained reasons, gaps in menstruation, trips out of state that coincided with a pregnancy not brought to term….
…[Y]esterday in an interview on Newsmax of all places, a host asked Trump spokesman Jason Miller whether Donald Trump supported or wouldn’t aim to prevent states from enforcing their own menstrual surveillance regimes. It was one of those Fox-like interviews in which the host seems to go out of his way to signal what the right answer is. You wouldn’t do this, right?
“But he wouldn’t support monitoring pregnancies, even if a state decided to do that?” the host asked.
Miller responded that “he’s [i.e., Trump’s] made it very clear that he’s not going to go and weigh in and push various states on how they want to go and set up their particular rules and restrictions. That’s going to be up to the states.”
So he went there. It’s totally up to the states. Trump’s “leave it up to the states” approach applies to all these menstrual surveillance and travel restriction regimes as well. It’s a new opening for the Harris campaign to focus attention on an issue that hasn’t yet gotten enough attention — not just abortion rights as a general issue but states and county sheriffs’ effort to restrict women’s travel, access their medical records and current state of menstruation or gestation, and bar access to legal medications.
What else is on Trump’s befuddled mind these days? He’s “obsessed” with Olivia Nuzzi/RFK Jr. story.
The Daily Beast: Trump Is ‘Obsessed’ With RFK Jr.’s Sexting Scandal.
Donald Trump has become “obsessed” with the sexting scandal surrounding his new ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi, according to a report.
The former president even called up the 70-year-old Kennedy—who’s married to Curb Your Enthusiasm star Cheryl Hines—to ask if the bombshell reports about him and the 31-year-old journalist were true, and if the relationship ever went beyond the sending of “demure” nudes, according to Puck News.
“[Kennedy] denied the whole thing to Trump,” a source with direct knowledge told the outlet. “He said he hardly knows her. He said he met her one time.”
Trump was also apparently close to making a public statement about the alleged digital dalliance, having “almost posted to Truth Social, his social media platform, ‘My condolences to Ryan Lizza…’” according to the Puck report. Lizza, a Politico journalist, ended his engagement to Nuzzi last month after learning of her relationship with Kennedy, according to Vanity Fair.
Trump apparently exercised more restraint than his adviser, Corey Lewandowski, who tweeted and then later deleted his own post sharing the Kennedy gossip.
Nuzzi had interviewed Trump for a piece published earlier this month which, in part, featured a detailed description of the GOP nominee’s ear bandaged up following the attempt on his life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in July.
By Taiyo Matsumoto
I’m sure he’s read the latest gossip about the scandal at Page Six. The Daily Beast: ‘Madly in Love’ Olivia Nuzzi Had ‘Incredible’ FaceTime Sex With RFK Jr: Report.
The forbidden love between New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been chronicled in a new report that reveals even more details of their dalliances.
The Page Six report, which cites only anonymous sources, claimed Friday the 31-year-old Nuzzi fell “madly in love” with the Kennedy scion, 70, after he “love bombed” her and sparked a virtual relationship during his campaign.
The two reportedly exchanged “I love yous” and had an affair that lasted nearly a year, complete with the duo having “incredible” FaceTime sex and speaking on “long calls.” The report also alleged that Nuzzi and Kennedy shared “endless texts” with each other.
Page Six reported that Nuzzi and Kennedy’s supposed relationship kicked off as Nuzzi worked on a profile of the failed presidential candidate for New York.
Nuzzi, who was engaged to Politico’s Ryan Lizza at the time, traveled to Los Angeles to interview Kennedy during a hike together in October 2023. It was on that hike that Kennedy, who has been married to the actress Cheryl Hines for 10 years, reportedly made his first pass at Nuzzi and grabbed her arm “as a romantic overture.”
Page Six reported that Nuzzi and Kennedy’s relationship heated up after the journalist contacted Kennedy with follow-up questions as she wrote her profile. The relationship reportedly remained under wraps for months, but word of it had reached Lizza by August.
Vanity Fairreportedthat Lizza had a “heated” call with Kennedy over the alleged affair upon learning of it. It remains unclear how Lizza caught wind of the reported fling, but the Daily Beast exclusively revealed this week that Kennedy had been bragging about receiving nude photos of Nuzzi.
I hope this will be the end of Nuzzi’s career in journalism, but it probably won’t be. She could always go to Fox News.
I’ve tried to keep this post light, because the news overall has been so depressing lately. In that spirit, I’m going to end with another hilarious, gossipy story about a Republican candidate.
Rolling Stone: Childless GOP Candidate Borrows Friend’s Wife and Kids for Photo Ops.
Republicans have taken umbrage with the notion that they’re weird — specifically when it comes to accusations that they’re weird about people (usually women) who don’t have children.
The sentiment in Republican politics that childless Americans are — as JD Vance put it — disorienting and disturbing has become so prevalent that one GOP candidate has taken to borrowing his friends’ wife and children for photo ops.
According to a Friday report from The New York Times, Derrick Anderson — a former Green Beret running for the House of Representatives in Virginia — has repeatedly featured a woman and her three daughters in campaign materials.
One photo features the group posing close together in an image that you could probably find framed on a grandmother’s mantle, the type of photo that your parents made your uncle with a DSLR camera take because “we never get nice pictures together.” https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1839759803729752271
In one campaign video, Anderson is seen walking side-by-side with the same woman. In another video, which was featured on the National Republican Campaign Committee’s website and on his YouTube channel, shows Anderson speaking to the woman and the three girls while seated in a home dining room.
According to the Times, the woman and girls are “the wife and children of a longtime friend.” Anderson’s campaign website does not mention a wife or children, but notes that he “lives in Spotsylvania County with his dog, Ranger, a Dalmatian.” The Republican candidate recently revealed on social media that he is engaged to his girlfriend, Maggie, and has posted pictures of her — she is decidedly not the woman featured in the photos and videos.
By Taiyo Matsumoto
You can see the “family photo” in this article at Mediaite: Anti-Abortion GOP Candidate Borrows Friend’s Wife and Daughters for Campaign Photo Op.
A Friday article at The New York Times, headlined “G.O.P. Candidates, Looking to Soften Their Image, Turn to Their Wives,” reported how “male Republicans struggling to appeal to female voters concerned about their records on reproductive rights are unleashing their spouses to make the pitch on their behalf.”
Male GOP candidates who are worried about getting dragged down by the abortion issue in November are putting their wives front and center in their campaign ads. That’s hardly a new phenomenon — candidates have showcased the stereotypical [husband + wife + at least two children + probably a dog or two] family photo for ages — but the Republican angst about Dobbs is so acute, at least one candidate resorted to faking an entire family for his ads.
These GOP ads included anodyne images of “women in softly lit living rooms and pristine kitchens vouching for their husbands’ characters,” “a wholesome family gathering around the dining room table,” and moms “driving S.U.V.s with young children in the back seat as they stop for gas and groceries, talking about how their husbands are champions for their families, and can be champions for yours, too.” [….]
So what do you do if you’re running for Congress with an R after your name but don’t have your own wife and kids?
If you’re Derrick Anderson, a candidate running in an open race for Virginia’s seventh congressional district, you borrow a wife and daughters from a friend.
The campaign of Derrick Anderson, a former Army Green Beret who is running in a competitive race for an open seat in Virginia’s Seventh District, has posted footage of him posing with a woman and her three daughters in what looks like a photo that might be used for an annual holiday card. In another scene filmed for potential use in a campaign ad, Mr. Anderson is seated around the dining room table with the same woman and three girls, chatting and smiling.
But the people are not relatives. They are the wife and children of a longtime friend. Mr. Anderson, who announced this month that he was engaged, does not have any children of his own. His campaign website says he lives with his dog and does not display any of the photos.
Isn’t it strange that Trump is never accompanied by his wife and family, but the media never mentions it?
That’s it for me today. Please take care, especially if you are/were in the path of Helene.
I found some interesting reads over the weekend so I hope you’ll enjoy them! They are all sort’ve stories that actually reflect a lot of the things that fascinate and entertain me. I love strategy games and have been playing them on line for quite some time Actually, it’s been since the early 1990s when most of the games were simply text oriented. I also love animation art, and books, and of course, music. So, here’s a little bit on that and a little bit of stuff that has to do with social justice too. If I do a have a consistent train of thought here it is that so much of what should be entertaining and could be informative can sow bad seeds. I’ve a few examples where the pop and geek culture are taking on hard topics. Some are successful and examining crucial human stories. Some rely on the same old misogyny, racism, and homobigotry.
Japanese Manga is a way many creative people in Japan explore how they feel about a variety of things. This article is about a new manga book on the lives of the Fukashima plant workers.
A manga that describes the reality of daily life at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant through the eyes of a worker is enjoying popularity.
“Ichiefu” (1F), written by Kazuto Tatsuta, 49, first appeared in autumn 2013 as a serial comic in the weekly magazine “Morning,” published by Kodansha Ltd. Ichiefu stands for the Fukushima No. 1 plant among locals.
The comic was published in book form on April 23. The publisher shipped a total of 150,000 copies of the first volume, which is an unusually large number for a little-known manga artist.
Tatsuta said he changed jobs repeatedly after graduating from university. At the same time, he also worked as a comic strip artist.
It was when he was considering another job change that the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami occurred, triggering the nuclear accident at the Fukushima plant.
While seeking a better-paying job, Tatsuta also wondered what part he could do as a citizen of Japan to help. As a result, he began to work at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant from June 2012 for a total of six months.
“Ichiefu” describes the situation at the plant in great detail. The descriptions of equipment, such as the masks and protective gear the workers used, and the procedures they took to measure radiation levels make readers feel as if they are there and reading actual worker manuals.
The comic also depicts intimate practices only workers there would know. For example, the workers always say “Be safe” to each other before starting their shifts.
Each of the workers was also required to stop working when his dosimeter issued a fourth warning sound.
I quit playing a few games last year that I had really grown fond of because of the rampant misogyny and homophobia of many of the white male 
players. I had repeatedly asked them to constrain their language, behavior, and what they posted. I am fortunately playing a game right now where that’s not the case. I am still one of the few female players in my alliance. I believe I am one of two but I have found that I generally enjoy better game play if I am in an alliance where there are many openly gay men. This NPR article summarizes a series of articles that are focused on white male privilege in the online game atmosphere.
In video games, sexism often comes in the form of male-dominated storylines and character archetypes. In the video game community, it takes a more menacing shape.
It ranges from attempts to silence female critics to the harassment of fellow players. Some harassment even goes so far as phone calls and rape threats, as one female game developer found out last year.
“The issue is often framed as a women’s issue, but sexual harassment, sexism and misogyny in gaming is not a women’s issue — it’s a gaming community issue,” says Jonathan McIntosh, a producer for the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games Web series.
Last week, McIntosh wrote a piece for gaming website Polygon about what he calls the “invisible benefits” that males experience while playing video games. In the post, he lists 25 effects of “male gamer privilege.” Here’s a sample:
- I can choose to remain completely oblivious, or indifferent to the harassment that many women face in gaming spaces.
- I am never told that video games or the surrounding culture is not intended for me because I am male.
- I can publicly post my username, gamertag or contact information online without having to fear being stalked or sexually harassed because of my gender.
- I will never be asked to “prove my gaming cred” simply because of my gender.
- I will almost always have the option to play a character of my gender, as most protagonists or heroes will be male by default.
- If I am trash-talked or verbally berated while playing online, it will not be because I am male nor will my gender be invoked as an insult.
- My gaming ability, attitude, feelings or capability will never be called into question based on unrelated natural biological functions.
So far, the reaction to his post — both in the more than 700 comments on the piece and elsewhere — has been relatively civil. As McIntosh pointed out on Twitter, he doubts it would have been as civil if he had been a female writer raising the same points.
“I’m saying the same thing that women have been saying for years,” McIntosh says. “There’s nothing in my piece that’s really new, it’s just that it’s coming from me. If my name was Joanna McIntosh … I’d be called irrational, I’d be called hysterical and I’d be called too sensitive.”
One other thing that I did not mention last week but I would like to mention this week is the rape scene between the Lannister twins in Game of Thrones. The same scene in the book actually was rough but consensual.
There’s been a lot of discussion, Internet rage, and general overall hoopla following Sunday night’s episode of Game of Thrones, as the television show made the most shocking book-to-screen deviation to date. *Spoiler free for future books.*
Jaime and Cersei finally had their reunited love scene, and suddenly for book readers, Jeyne Westerling seemed like a small cinematic sacrifice to make in comparison. I don’t want to get into a philosophical discussion on whether or not this scene constitutes as rape. Smarter people than I have alreadydonethat.
What we have to work with in the scene is what the characters said and did because we can’t know how they felt. And whether or not the scene was intended to come across as consensual sex, the way the scene was cut by the director makes it definitive to the audience that it was not consensual. Cersei repeatedly said no while Jaime forced himself on top of her and answered that he didn’t care as his creepy voiceover carried out onto a shot of Arya staring at mountains. If that’s all we know about the scene, then yes, in the television show Jaime raped Cersei.
In some ways, it’s useful for television shows to acknowledge the extent of sexual violence in our culture. These narratives allow necessary stories to be told. But the execution is too easy. From daytime soap operas to prestige cable shows, rape is all too often used to place the degradation of the female body and a woman’s vulnerability at the center of the narrative. Rape is used to create drama and ratchet up ratings. And it’s rare to see the brutality and complexity of a rape accurately conveyed on-screen. Instead, we are treated to an endless parade of women being forced into submission as the delicate and wilting flowers television writers and producers seem to want them to be.
I am still wondering why there seems to be a renaissance in misogny, racism and homobigotry. You would think that the sports arena would have made better strides against racism given that teams and fans are fully integrated to the idea that there are players of many races. However, it seems the real money and power behind the bread and circuses are still those rich, horrid, white men. We talked about the Clippers’ owner last week. There is, of course, more on that.
Deadspin has acquired an extended, 15-minute version of the conversation between Clippers owner Donald Sterling and his then-girlfriend V. Stiviano. If the original nine-minute tape acquired by TMZ left any questions about Sterling’s opinions regarding minorities, the audio here should remove all doubt that he’s a doddering racist with views not too far removed from the plantation.
The Clippers themselves showed some class this week in a protest that was priceless. There will undoubtedly be more coming and hopefully the NBA can find a way to strip Sterling of the franchise.
The Clippers gathered at center court before a118-97 Game 4 loss in their first-round series against the Golden State Warriors and took off their Clippers warm-up shirts and left them there. They then warmed up wearing inside-out red shooting shirts that did not display the Clippers name or logo. During the game, players wore black arm or wrist bands and black socks.
In other news, water is still wet and Sarah Palin is still one of the dumbest people on the planet. This is the money quote she gave the NRA: ‘Waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists’.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) defended the controversial enhanced interrogation technique of waterboarding this weekend, and implied that the practice would still be commonplace “if I were in charge.”
“They obviously have information on plots to carry out Jihad,” she said at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual meeting on Saturday evening, referring to prisoners. “Oh, but you can’t offend them, can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.”
The remark stands in stark contrast to the opinion of her former running mate, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
The former Republican presidential nominee, who spent more than five years in a prison camp during the Vietnam War, has repeatedly denounced the practice, which he says is torture.
In her speech, Palin praised the NRA, a group whose members “are needed now more than ever, because every day we are seeing more and more efforts to strip away our Second Amendment rights,” she said.
I am still waiting for some examples of how any government in the US is stripping away the second amendment rights. I do, however, have thousands of examples of how women are losing their right to self determination.
My last offering this morning is yet another in depth article on the demise of the middle class in the USA. Middle class Americans are an endangered species.
Wages for millions of American workers, particularly those without college degrees, have flat-lined. Census figures show the median household income in 2012 was no higher than it was 25 years ago. Men’s median wages were lower than in the early 1970s.
Meanwhile, many of the expenses associated with a middle-class life have increased beyond inflation. This includes college tuition, whose skyrocketing cost has laid siege to a bedrock principle of the American Dream: that your children will do better than you did.
A recent poll conducted by the Washington Post and the Miller Center at the University of Virginia found that 40 percent of those calling themselves middle class felt less financially secure than they were just a few years ago. Forty-five percent said they worry “a lot” about having enough money stashed away for retirement, and 57 percent said they worry about meeting their bills. Less than half said they expect their kids to do any better.
Fewer Americans find themselves in the heart of the middle class with every passing year.
In the mid-1970s, the majority of Americans were in the middle, with 52 percent earning the equivalent (in today’s dollars) of $35,000 to $100,000. Today, according to census figures, the share of households earning under $35,000 is virtually unchanged, 35 percent. The shift has occurred in the other two categories. Households with incomes over $100,000 have doubled, to 22 percent, while less than 44 percent are in the middle cluster.
So, what’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Memeorandum Crooks and Liars Democracy NOW The UK Guardian
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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