This blogaround brought to you by bagels with cream cheese.
Recommended Reading:
Chauncey DeVega: [CN: White supremacy; police brutality] The Philando Castile Verdict Is a Reminder That in America Black People are the True Walking Dead
Friederike Heine: German Lawmakers Approve Gay Marriage, Even as Merkel Votes No, Saying It's Between Man and Woman
Marie Solis: Nearly 850 Backlogged Rape Kits Were Found Infested with Mold in Texas
Robert Jago: [CN: Racism; colonialism; displacement] Canada's National Parks Are Colonial Crime Scenes
Keith Reid-Cleveland: Only Cop Charged in Connection to Sandra Bland's Death Cuts a Deal
Ragen Chastain: [CN: Fat hatred; body policing] Girl Scouts Lead in Size Acceptance
Amy Larocca: [CN: Privilege] The Wellness Epidemic: Why Are So Many Privileged People Feeling So Sick? Luckily, There's No Shortage of Cures.
Jason Torchinsky: The Jerry Orbach Art Car Is Now a Reality
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Hey, Remember the 90s Edition. [Content Note: Moving GIF below the fold.]
Deeks: I totally died when you said your coat in that picture looked like something Divine would wear.
Liss: LOLOLOL! Because it is! Which is why I love it!
Deeks: Fuck yes.
Liss: I told Spudsy: "That's what it would look like if Interview put fat people on its cover!"
Deeks: LOLOLOL is Interview still around?
Liss: Who knows. I haven't read Interview since there was still a Waldenbooks at the mall.
Deeks: Waldenbooks! LOLOLOL.
Liss: "Let's hit Waldenbooks and pick up the latest issue of Interview then swing by Tower Records for the new Happy Mondays single!"
Deeks: "I want an iced coffee from Gloria Jean's."
Liss: Gloria Jean's!!! Ahhhhhhhhahahahahahaha!!!
Deeks: LOLOLOL
Liss: "Let's pick up some new sleeveless jean jackets at American Eagle."
Deeks: OMFG I used to wear the fuck out of suspenders, but, you know, just hanging down, as was the look.
Liss: Of course. I had a jean jacket that the sleeves zipped off of. So I could wear it as a jacket or as a vest over a flannel NO GODDAMN DOY.
Deeks: LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!! Zippered sleeves!
Liss: I bet you bought all your clothes at Chess King.
Deeks: Until I discovered Hot Topic.
Liss: "Hold up! I can't go with you to B Dalton Books because I'm not done with my Orange Julius! Just go ahead—I need to pick up some new suspenders at Structure, anyway."
Deeks: LOLOLOL!!!!!!!
Liss: The entire 90s mall roster is stuck in my lint trap!
Deeks: Who even remembers this shit? (You.)
Liss: LOLOLOL!!! P.S. The Limited.
"Here's the math: If I did not look the way I do, then I would not be on TV or on two book covers. I would not have a beauty column or an Instagram with more than 100,000 followers. This does not mean that I have not put in work and effort and done my job well, but my beauty is not something that I earned. I did not work for it, yet it has opened doors for me, allowing me to be seen and heard. And for me to pretend that it does not exist denies the ways in which being perceived as pretty has contributed to my success and made the road a bit smoother."—Janet Mock, writing very frankly about the privileges she enjoys because of the ways in which her appearance hews closely to kyriarchal beauty standards.
Her entire essay, "Being Pretty Is a Privilege, But We Refuse to Acknowledge It," is worth your time to read.
It's also a very interesting juxtaposition to the dynamic Shonda Rhimes was describing, which I highlighted in yesterday's Quote of the Day.
[Related Reading: Ugly Girl.]
If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017
So, just take away millions of people's healthcare until further notice? What a tremendously smart and compassionate plan j/k it is vile. https://t.co/eRGVhBsE7L
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 30, 2017
Crime and killings in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help. 1714 shootings in Chicago this year!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017
What does "federal help" mean, exactly? Is the president threatening martial law in a U.S. city? This is dangerously, irresponsibly vague. https://t.co/2Uf4Nd2R6o
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 30, 2017
[Content Note: Abuse.]
Meanwhile, on Twitter...
It's interesting how many people say that Trump has "changed" as soon as he does something to them that he's long done to other people.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 30, 2017
I didn't have to be personally harmed by Trump to understand that he's a vile abuser who seeks vengeance on people he perceives to fail him.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 30, 2017
I listened to the numerous women who said he assaulted them, or peeped on them in changing rooms, or spoke inappropriately to them.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 30, 2017
He boasted about sexual assault, about treating women "like shit," about enacting revenge, about not paying people, about consorting w/scum.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 30, 2017
Yet there are a whole lot of people who still want us to believe he "changed," once he aimed his despicable behavior in their direction.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 30, 2017
That was always a bad calculation, not only b/c he would inevitably come for them, but b/c that tolerance abetted his cruelty and his rise.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 30, 2017
Now he's in a position to enact that cruelty on an unfathomable scale. In the end, the only thing that's changed is the reach of his abuse.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 30, 2017
Hey, you know how I keep saying the Republicans are acting like a party who knows they won't have to be accountable to voters ever again...? https://t.co/R8qbKxUlEF
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 29, 2017
Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill also released a statement, saying that she would share publicly available data with the commission but complaining about a "lack of openness" about what the panel is looking for. Merrill cited past legal challenges to Kobach's efforts to clean up voter rolls in Kansas, which have led to some eligible voters being removed from registration lists.
"Given Secretary Kobach's history we find it very difficult to have confidence in the work of this commission," said Merrill, a Democrat and outgoing president of the National Association of Secretaries of State.
A spokeswoman for the association said the secretaries will almost certainly discuss Kobach's controversial request at their summer conference next week in Indianapolis.
The commission, which has yet to meet, has been viewed with suspicion from the start by civil rights groups, which think it will be used to justify measures — such as strict ID requirements — that will make it more difficult to vote.
The letter @KrisKobach1787 is sending to states confirms: Pence and Kobach are laying the groundwork for voter suppression, plain & simple. pic.twitter.com/22Ub1TxRS1
— Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) June 29, 2017
A number of experts, as well as at least one state official, reacted with a mix of alarm and bafflement. Some saw political motivations behind the requests, while others said making such information public would create a national voter registration list, a move that could create new election problems.And, one presumes, then subsequently used to justify voting requirements that disenfranchise voters who are most likely to be Democratic voters, which Republicans have already been doing in state legislatures for decades.
"You'd think there would want to be a lot of thought behind security and access protocols for a national voter file, before you up and created one," said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola University School of Law and former Department of Justice civil rights official. "This is asking to create a national voter file in two weeks."
David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, also expressed serious concerns about the request. "It's probably a good idea not to make publicly available the name, address and military status of the people who are serving our armed forces to anyone who requests it," he said.
...There is no evidence to suggest that voting twice is a widespread problem, though experts say removing duplicate registrations are a good practice if done carefully.
"In theory, I don't think we have a problem with that as an idea, but the devil is always in the details," said Dale Ho, the director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project. While he believes voter registration list maintenance is important, he says Kobach's Crosscheck program has been repeatedly shown to be ineffective and to produce false matches. A study by a group of political scientists at Stanford published earlier this year found that Crosscheck highlighted 200 false matches for every one true double vote.
"I have every reason to think that given the shoddy work that Mr. Kobach has done in this area in the past that this is going to be yet another boondoggle and a propaganda tool that tries to inflate the problem of double registration beyond what it actually is," Ho said.
Script re: the voter roll request.
— Celeste P. (@Celeste_pewter) June 29, 2017
Start w/ state assemblymember/state senator, who can call on Secretary of State to refuse the request. pic.twitter.com/ESALHJlpij
[Content Note: Extortion; threats; misogyny; use of disablist language.]
Following Donald Trump's tweeted attack on Mika Brzezinski yesterday, Brzezinski and her Morning Joe co-host (and fiancee) Joe Scarborough penned an op-ed for the Washington Post in which they disclosed in passing: "This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas."
That sounds an awful lot like attempted blackmail — and, during their broadcast this morning, co-anchor Willie Geist asked them to talk about what happened. The additional details they provided are chilling.
BRZEZINSKI: —approval ratings, and very few accomplishments. He's not in reality.Later in the segment, one of the panelists,
GEIST: There's never been any question that he requires daily, if not hourly, affirmation. I want to ask you guys about something else you published in the Washington Post piece this morning. It's something again we've talked about in private; you've never talked about it on television, but I'm already getting a lot of questions about it, so I want to give you the chance to explain. I'll just read a quote: "This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas." What exactly happened there, to the extent you're comfortable talking about it?
SCARBOROUGH: Well, I mean, I'm comfortable talking— I mean, I think we have to talk about it now, because it explains the relationship and his really strange obsession with this show and, in particular, it's a really disturbing obsession with Mika. Ummmmmm, we got a call that, 'Hey, the National Enquirer is gonna run a negative story against you guys,' and it was— You know, Donald is friends with, the president is friends with the guy that runs the National Enquirer. And they said, 'If you call the president up, and you apologize for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone and basically spike the story.'
I had, I will just say, three people at the very top of the administration calling me, and the response was like: 'Are you kidding me? I don't know what they have. Run a story. I'm not gonna do it.' The calls kept coming, and kept coming, and they were like, 'Call. You need to call. Please call. Come on, Joe — just pick up the phone and call him!'
[Someone offscreen says: "It's blackmail!"]
BRZEZINSKI: And let me explain what they were threatening: They were calling my children. They were calling close friends—
SCARBOROUGH: You're talking about the National Enquirer.
BRZEZINSKI: —and they were pinning the story on my ex-husband, who would absolutely never do that, so I knew immediately it was a lie and that they had nothing. And these calls persisted for quite some time, and then Joe had the conversations that he had with the White House, where they said, 'Oh, this could go away.'
GEIST: So, I just want to be very clear here: The National Enquirer is harassing your children, your daughters—
BRZEZINSKI: Right.
GEIST: —who are teenagers—
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. And it's, you know—
GEIST: —and then, Joe, in turn, is getting calls from the White House—
BRZEZINSKI: Saying call Donald and apologize.
SCARBOROUGH: By the way, they're also, they're also— I was at Mika's house for a few minutes, and came out, and there was a guy in a van that was just staked out there, watching. It was clear that he was from a tabloid, and he said— He started asking questions. And then, after all of this started happening, that's when we started getting calls from the White House saying, 'If you call— You need to call the president, and—'
GEIST: Wow.
BRZEZINSKI: And our response, talking to my ex-husband, talking to Joe, talking to my kids, was: Screw it. Let 'em run it. Just go ahead and run it. We're not calling. We're not calling.
After a 1990 interview with Connie Chung that didn't go the way Mr. Trump might have hoped, he unleashed on Ms. Chung during a subsequent interview with Joan Rivers, calling Ms. Chung "a disaster" and saying she was "like a little child. I mean this girl – this woman – has less talent than anyone I know of."Donald Trump is scary, because he has no brakes on his worst instincts, is impulsive and cruel, has an extraordinary amount of power, and seemingly no one who is willing to offer a single check on his behavior, no matter how awful it gets.
He went on to disturbingly recount that, when Ms. Chung sent him roses after the interview, "I cut 'em up and sent 'em back. I sent her back the stems. Actually, I did. I sent her back the stems, but I kept the top."
This is, to put it mildly, wildly inappropriate behaviour in any context, but it is utterly unrecognizable as the action of a person with a professional grudge and entirely comports instead with the impulse of an abusive spurned lover.
Suggested by Shaker musicalnomad: "What tradition do you really enjoy, and why? Could be any tradition pertaining to food, religion, dress, music, stories, superstitions, or any other thing I've forgotten!"
I like the tradition Deeks and I have of getting tattoos together around one of our birthdays.
An explosive new report from Shane Harris at the Wall Street Journal: GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails from Hackers, Implied a Connection to Flynn.
Before the 2016 presidential election, a longtime Republican opposition researcher mounted an independent campaign to obtain emails he believed were stolen from Hillary Clinton’s private server, likely by Russian hackers.
In conversations with members of his circle and with others he tried to recruit to help him, the GOP operative, Peter W. Smith, implied he was working with retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, at the time a senior advisor to then-candidate Donald Trump.
"He said, 'I'm talking to Michael Flynn about this—if you find anything can you let me know?'" said Eric York, a computer-security expert from Atlanta who searched hacker forums on Mr. Smith's behalf for people who might have access to the emails.
...Mr. Smith's focus was some 33,000 emails Mrs. Clinton said were deleted because they were deemed personal. Mr. Smith said he believed that the emails might have been obtained by hackers and that they actually concerned official matters Mrs. Clinton wanted to conceal—two notions for which he offered no evidence.
"Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing."--Trump, July 2016. https://t.co/EOd4DQ3FGS
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 29, 2017
Whatcha been cooking up in your kitchen lately, Shakers?
Share your favorite recipes, solicit good recipes, share recipes you've recently tried, want to try, are trying to perfect, whatever! Whether they're your own creation, or something you found elsewhere, share away.
Also welcome: Recipes you've seen recently that you'd love to try, but haven't yet!
There are a lot of folks very invested in the narrative that the Russia investigations are a sideshow, that they're nothing but Democratic sour grapes to explain their electoral loss, that Donald Trump and his administration have no ties to Russia, that there's nothing to see here, blah blah blah.
Folks on both the right and the left have dismissed the investigations, and anyone who is concerned about Trump's possible collusion with Russia and/or his refusal to take the Russian threat seriously and/or his adoration of Vladimir Putin, as foolish, distractions, nothingburgers.
Well, have a big bite of this fucking nothingburger, pals:
Donald Trump has told White House aides to come up with possible concessions to offer as bargaining chips in his planned meeting next week with Vladimir Putin, according to two former officials familiar with the preparations.Oh, I think it's pretty clear what Putin would be asked to give in return.
National security council staff have been tasked with proposing "deliverables" for the first Trump-Putin encounter, including the return of two diplomatic compounds Russians were ordered to vacate by the Obama administration in response to Moscow's interference in the 2016 election, the former officials said. It is not clear what Putin would be asked to give in return.
[Content Note: Fat hatred.]
"After I lost weight, I discovered that people found me valuable. Worthy of conversation. A person one could look at. A person one could compliment. A person one could admire. You heard me. I discovered that NOW people saw me as a PERSON. What the hell did they see me as before? How invisible was I to them then? How hard did they work to avoid me? What words did they use to describe me? What value did they put on my presence at a party, a lunch, a discussion? When I was fat, I wasn;t a PERSON to these people. Like I had been an Invisible Woman who suddenly materialized in front of them. Poof! There I am. Thin and ready for a chat."—Shonda Rhimes, writing very frankly about the difference in how she was treated (that is, way better) after she lost around 150 pounds.
This is definitely something I've heard from friends who have lost a lot of weight.
It's also akin to something I experienced when I used to work in a corporate job: When people (especially men) talked to me over the phone, they (generally) spoke to me exactly as the competent, prepared, smart, and talented person I am. Then they met me in person, and suddenly they spoke to me like I was a child, and not a very bright child at that.
I was the same person with the same brain and the same abilities, but their stereotypes invoked by my fat body overwhelmed their actual experience of me as a human being.
Fat hatred is really something.
Health-care policy, Donald Trump has admitted, is more complex than he once assumed. "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated," he said in February as he struggled to cobble together a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. Still, he was optimistic about his chances. "Costs will come down, and I think the health care will go up very, very substantially," he told insurance company executives, explaining that the current system was a "disaster" that would only get worse. "I think people are gonna like it a lot. We've taken the best of everything we can take." In an interview in May, shortly after the House passed a bill that would cause an estimated 23 million people to drop or lose their insurance coverage, Trump boasted that he had become an expert on the subject. "It was just something that wasn't high on my list," he told Time magazine. "But in a short period of time I understood everything there was to know about health care."The country's fate on healthcare, as everything else, hangs in the balance between Trump's ignorance and his cruelty. His ignorance stands to make things worse in one way, but, if he were knowledgeable and competent enough to get shit done, his cruelty would make things worse in a different way. Either way, we're fucked.
Nearly everything Trump has said, however, suggests that his understanding of the $3 trillion U.S. health-care sector remains dangerously limited.
...[A]s The New York Times reports, the president may not understand how the [Senate] bill works.
A senator who supports the bill left the meeting at the White House with a sense that the president did not have a grasp of some basic elements of the Senate plan—and seemed especially confused when a moderate Republican complained that opponents of the bill would cast it as a massive tax break for the wealthy, according to an aide who received a detailed readout of the exchange....Trump, for his part, rejected the implication that he doesn't understand health care, tweeting Wednesday morning, in the wake of the Times report, that he knows perfectly well what he is doing. "Some of the Fake News Media likes to say that I am not totally engaged in healthcare. Wrong, I know the subject well & want victory for U.S."
Mr. Trump said he planned to tackle tax reform later, ignoring the repeal's tax implications, the staff member added.
All available evidence suggests that the opposite is true, and that the consequences of the president's ignorance could be dire.
Watch this NRA recruitment video: calls on real Americans to arm themselves to fight liberals. Violence is coming. https://t.co/qA9rz1qeUO
— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) June 29, 2017
Can you guess which is which? I bet you can!
Pew Research Center has found that 84 percent of Democrats agree with the statement "Everything possible should be done to make it easy for every citizen to vote."
Among people who identify as independents, 57 percent agree.
And only 35 percent of Republicans agree.
That is appalling. Especially in light of this finding: "The right to vote is deeply valued by the public: An overwhelming 91% say that they consider the right to vote as essential to their own personal sense of freedom."
And yet they would deny that right to other people.
Because the Republican Party doesn't just fail to do everything possible to make it easy for every citizen to vote; they actively work to prevent people from voting.
Voting is dignity. And one of the two major parties believes overwhelmingly that not every citizen is owed that dignity.
Despicable.
[Content Note: Misogyny; disablism; hostility to consent.]
This morning, Donald Trump's ego got bruised because his old Morning Joe pals, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, aren't kissing his ass like they used to do during the good old days of the campaign.
So he lashed out at Mika with a pair of tweets reading: "I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!"
It's likely that Trump went in on Mika specifically because she made fun of the size of his hands on his fake Time magazine cover.
And he determined, with his typical sagacity, that an appropriate and proportional response would be using his platform as President of the United States to publicly call her stupid, crazy, vain, and desperate, with all the emotional maturity of a popular high-schooler shit-talking a kid whose only fault was wanting to be liked.
He also either invented Brzezinski having had a facelift to demean her, or disclosed that she had one, which would be both cruel and deeply unethical.
This is also (at least) the second time that Trump has talked about a female journalist "bleeding." I find that incredibly disturbing.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 29, 2017
If it's true, that is an appalling betrayal. It's also profoundly unethical to disclose another person's surgical procedure without consent.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 29, 2017
Not because of what it says about her; because of what it says about Donald Trump.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 29, 2017
Which isn't surprising, but is still awful to behold.
[Content Note: Nativism; video may autoplay at link.]
Tal Kopan at CNN reports:
The House Thursday is expected to pass bills that would hand [Donald] Trump key pieces of his immigration agenda, especially efforts targeting sanctuary cities.It's unclear whether either bill has enough votes to pass the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could not find enough votes to pass Kate's Law last year, and one hopes he will struggle again after the House inevitably passes this garbage today.
The bills, "Kate's Law" and the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, would install harsher penalties for repeat illegal entry to the U.S., and expand US law on sanctuary cities to pressure localities to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
...Immigration and civil liberties advocates have also come out swinging against the bills, saying they bolster a "deportation force" and anti-immigrant agenda from the Trump administration.
Both bills come from the Judiciary Committee led by Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, a longtime proponent of strict immigration policies like Trump's and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Another lead sponsor is Iowa Rep. Steve King, one of the most aggressive Republicans on immigration enforcement who has a history of controversial statements about immigrants.
[At a press conference on Wednesday, Homan] was asked whether immigrants in the country illegally were more likely to commit crimes.The president, however, has. He has plainly stated that demonizing lie, and he brought victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants to his speech to Congress, where he announced the creation of Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE), an office within the Department of Homeland Security to, according to Trump, "serve American victims" of undocumented immigrants and provide "a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests."
He suggested that they weren't.
Homan was describing a number of crimes that had been committed by immigrants in the United States and advocated for building a wall on the border with Mexico.
"Aren't you concerned, though, about exacerbating fears about undocumented immigrants?" CNN's Jim Acosta asked. "You're making it sound as if undocumented immigrants commit more crimes than people who are just native-born Americans."
"What is your sense of the numbers on this? Are undocumented people more likely or less likely to commit crimes?" Acosta asked.
"Did I say aliens commit more crimes than U.S. citizens? I didn't say that," Homan replied.
I'm infinitely less concerned about being harmed by an undocumented immigrant than I am about losing my healthcare because of Republicans.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 29, 2017
Suggested by Shaker KitSileya: "Have you ever made something yourself, as a child or an adult, that you are very proud of? What is it? (A dinner you cooked, or a piece of crafts you did at school, or a letter you wrote, for example.)"
I'm very proud of some of the things I've written here. That's a lazy and obvious answer, but it's also true!
This blogaround brought to you by toast.
Recommended Reading:
Marrion Johnson, Transgender Law Center: Meet the People Behind Our 2017 Plan of Resistance
Keith Reid-Cleveland: [Content Note: Police harassment; racism] Black Man Devonte Shipman Threatened with Jail Time for Jaywalking
Ciara O'Rourke: In Quest for Cuts, National Park Service Eyes Private Sector Takeovers
Kaila Hale-Stern: [CN: Play violence; demeaning euphemisms for sex workers] This Comic About How Girls Actually Play with Dolls Is So Spot-On
Rae Paoletta: New Evidence of an Ancient Neolithic Skull Cult Proves Humans Have Always Been Metal
And Happy Blogiversary to Fannie!!! ♥
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link.]
This fucking guy:
[Donald] Trump claimed Wednesday that Senate Republicans have a "big surprise" on their healthcare bill, while also declaring the measure is coming "along very well."Is it that you're throwing the bill in the fucking trash and agreeing to work with Democrats to improve upon Obamacare? Because, unless that's it, it ain't a GREAT SURPRISE.
"Healthcare is working along very well," Trump said after meeting with baseball players from the Chicago Cubs, according to a White House press pool report. "We're gonna have a big surprise. We have a great healthcare package."
When asked for further clarification about his remarks, the president repeated his claim about a big surprise.
"We're going to have a great, great surprise," he said.
Currently outside the Capitol pic.twitter.com/fn3KGfaljA
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 27, 2017
Handmaids are now circled around an anti-GOP healthcare plan rally that MoveOn, PP and others are kicking off pic.twitter.com/kEeBBZ3G5n
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 27, 2017
Handmaids/protesters now lined up in the pouring rain waiting for GOP senators to exit the Capitol so they can shout "shame" pic.twitter.com/dNPPvLMk2g
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 27, 2017
[Content Note: Racism; anti-Semitism; Islamophobia; misogyny; abuse.]
Julia Angwin and Hannes Grassegger have written a terrific piece for ProPublica, bluntly titled: "Facebook's Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men from Hate Speech But Not Black Children." It's a long read, but well worth your time and attention, so settle in.
I will just quickly highlight this passage, whence comes the title for my post (emphasis mine):
By 2008, the company had begun expanding internationally but its censorship rulebook was still just a single page with a list of material to be excised, such as images of nudity and Hitler. "At the bottom of the page it said, 'Take down anything else that makes you feel uncomfortable,'" said Dave Willner, who joined Facebook's content team that year.Well, that's refreshingly frank and ALSO TERRIBLE.
Willner, who reviewed about 15,000 photos a day, soon found the rules were not rigorous enough. He and some colleagues worked to develop a coherent philosophy underpinning the rules, while refining the rules themselves. Soon he was promoted to head the content policy team.
By the time he left Facebook in 2013, Willner had shepherded a 15,000-word rulebook that remains the basis for many of Facebook's content standards today.
"There is no path that makes people happy," Willner said. "All the rules are mildly upsetting." Because of the volume of decisions — many millions per day — the approach is "more utilitarian than we are used to in our justice system," he said. "It's fundamentally not rights-oriented."
The Black Belt refers to a stretch of land in the U.S. South whose fertile soil drew white colonists and plantation owners centuries ago. After hundreds of thousands of people were forced there as slaves, the region became the center of rural, black America. Today, the name describes predominantly rural counties where a large share of the population is African-American. The area is one of the most persistently poor in the country, and residents have some of the most limited economic prospects. Life expectancies are among the shortest in the U.S., and poor health outcomes are common...Leah McElrath at Shareblue: My Father Is One of the Vulnerable Seniors Most at Risk from GOP's Cruel Medicaid Cuts. "More than 1.4 million Americans are receiving nursing home or other long-term care paid for by Medicaid. One of them is my father. My father is now 77 years old and has a rare form of dementia. When he became unable to care for himself in his home, I took him into my home and cared for him there. But when I was no longer able financially, physically, and emotionally able to do so, my father moved to a Medicaid-funded facility. To qualify for Medicaid funding for long-term care, you have to meet two types of criteria: financial and medical. To put it bluntly, you have to be both very poor and very infirm."
Yes, measuring who's insured illuminates one way by which people have access to the health care system, but it's only part of the picture. The term "access to health care" has a standardized federal definition that's much broader: "the timely use of personal health services to achieve the best health outcomes."
And there's a list of metrics to measure it. Researchers consider structural barriers, such as distance to a hospital or how many health professionals work in an area, to be important. As are metrics that gauge whether a patient can find a health care provider that she trusts and can communicate with well enough to get the services she needs.
...In Alabama, Black Belt counties have fewer primary care physicians, dentists, and mental health providers per resident than other counties. They also tend to have the highest rates of uninsured people. Poverty rates, which are associated with limited access to care, are also high.
Like many Americans, I'm having politics fatigue. Or, to be more specific, arguing-about-politics fatigue.SAME.
I haven't run out of salient points or evidence for my political perspective, but there is a particular stumbling block I keep running into when trying to reach across the proverbial aisle and have those "difficult conversations" so smugly suggested by think piece after think piece:
I don't know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.
...I don't know how to convince someone how to experience the basic human emotion of empathy. I cannot have one more conversation with someone who is content to see millions of people suffer needlessly in exchange for a tax cut that statistically they'll never see (do you make anywhere close to the median American salary? Less? Congrats, this tax break is not for you).
I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters.
"She has a nice smile on her face. So I bet she treats you well." Trump said this abt a female reporter to Irish PM. https://t.co/sZmekMRjLz
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 27, 2017
I mean, one difference between the candidates is that HILLARY WOULDN'T HAVE SEXUALLY HARASSED A REPORTER JUST TRYING TO DO HER JOB. https://t.co/yArfQVT7lT
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 28, 2017
Republicans don't believe people are entitled to food...or drinkable water. https://t.co/WBZJpyYPMm
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 27, 2017
The Trump-Russia scandal is the subject of multiple investigations that may or may not unearth new revelations, but this much is already certain: Donald Trump is guilty.Yep. It's one of the great frustrations of this outrage that the brazenness of Trump's and his associates' behavior is routinely used to excuse it.
...Explicit collusion may yet be proved by the FBI investigation overseen by special counsel Robert Mueller or by other ongoing probes. But even if it is not, a harsh verdict can be pronounced: Trump actively and enthusiastically aided and abetted Russian President Vladimir Putin's plot against America. This is the scandal. It already exists—in plain sight.
...This country needs a thorough and public investigation to sort out how the Russian operation worked, how US intelligence and the Obama administration responded, and how Trump and his associates interacted with Russia and WikiLeaks. But whatever happened out of public view, the existing record is already conclusively shameful. Trump and his crew were active enablers of Putin's operation to subvert an American election. That is fire, not smoke. That is scandal enough.
Was just removed from the Justice Department during my coverage of the ongoing DOJ Pride event. They told me it was a closed-press event.
— Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnson82) June 28, 2017
I was able to attend DOJ Pride events multiple times as a member of the press during the Obama administration, but not under Trump.
— Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnson82) June 28, 2017
