Showing posts with label affirmative action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label affirmative action. Show all posts

We Resist: Day 530

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Tuesday, July 03, 2018
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Earlier today by me: Photo of the Day and Surviving the Trump Regime Is Warping My Sense of Time and Devastating: Merkel Backs Down and Agrees to Refugee Camps at Border.

Here are some more things in the news today...

Josh Israel at ThinkProgress: Trump Shrugs off News of Secret Nuclear Facility; Pretends He Prevented War with North Korea. "Despite Donald Trump's claims that Kim Jong Un would denuclearize, his own Defense Intelligence Agency reportedly believes that North Korea has no intention of ending its nuclear program. Still, days after U.S. intelligence officials said North Korea has actually increased its production at secret nuclear facilities, Trump tried to take credit on Tuesday for single-handedly preventing war with the country. 'If not for me,' he tweeted, 'we would now be at War [sic] with North Korea!'"

Donald Kirk at the Daily Beast: Pompeo Heads Back to North Korea; What More Will Trump Give Away? "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives in Pyongyang on Thursday pretty sure the North Koreans will have some American soldiers' remains to offer, if nothing else, at a time when the administration needs something, anything, to show Kim Jong Un would keep at least one of the commitments from his schmoozefest with [Donald] Trump in Singapore on June 12. But nukes? Complete, verifiable, irreversible 'denuclearization' — CVID, as the Americans say? We are a long, long way from that. And reports by NBC News and The Washington Post over the last few days suggest we are getting farther away all the time."

Lee Jeong-ho at the South China Morning Post: North Korea Is Looking to China to Boost Its Economy, But What About Denuclearisation? "'Beijing has promised solid economic support to Pyongyang throughout a series of bilateral summits held in China,' a senior South Korean diplomatic source said, adding that it was an attempt by the North to bring about economic change before it had fully denuclearised. Washington has long demanded a 'complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement' of Pyongyang's nuclear programme, in return for economic compensation. 'North Korea can now start developing its economy without giving up its nuclear weapons [by strengthening economic ties with China],' the source said."

Awesome. (Not awesome.)

* * *

[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse. Covers entire section.]

Kate Irby at McClatchy: Congressman Denied Entry to California Detention Facility for Children Under Age 14.
The cry of a child could be heard just inside the nondescript, brown detention facility in Pleasant Hill, California, a San Francisco suburb, and Rep. Jeff Denham wanted to see for himself what was inside.

He knocked on the door and waited about five minutes, alternatively silent, knocking some more and asking the security guard if employees inside were aware he was out there. The guard eventually told him the employees inside had been instructed to not answer the door, not to even speak to him.

He'd been trying for more than a week to tour the facility.

...The facility, Denham said, was detaining immigrant children ages 13 and younger. He said he was told that there were 25 children inside, and two girls had been separated from their parents. He had been told as recently as Friday that he was cleared to go in, he said, but the facility changed their tune over the weekend.

...He said he worked with multiple parts of [Donald] Trump's administration, including the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, to gain access to the facility.

...Denham said Southwest Key requested two weeks notice before Denham was allowed to tour the building, but would not explain why it needed that kind of time to prepare. Denham didn't want to wait because Congress would be back in session and trying to legislate on the issue by the time two weeks passed.

"They knew that we were coming," Denham said. "We knew cameras most likely wouldn't be allowed in, but if they wanted to show the conditions, and what a lovely facility they run, then why wouldn't they want people to come in and report on it?"
Note that Denham is a Republican. He was, presumably, hoping to show up to prove that critics of the administration are exaggerating. Instead, what he found was precisely what critics have been detailing.

And surely he knows the answer to his own question. The reason they don't "want people to come in and report on" the facility is because there is heinous abuse going on behind the tightly guarded doors.

Meanwhile, as you may recall, a number of refugees stopped at the border have been transferred en masse to prisons overwhelmed by the sudden influx. As a result, one of the prisons to which 1,000 refugees were sent is now contending with rapidly spreading infectious disease, and the detainees are suffering mightily:


And of course, as I've been urgently warning, all of this is preface to the Trump Regime's ultimate goal of a full-scale attack on documented immigrants, too. Especially Muslims and/or people of color.

Abigail Hauslohner and Andrew Ba Tran at the Washington Post: How Trump Is Changing the Face of Legal Immigration.
As the national immigration debate swirls around the effort to discourage illegal immigration by separating families at the border, the Trump administration is making inroads into another longtime priority: Reducing legal immigration.

The number of people receiving visas to move permanently to the United States is on pace to drop 12 percent in [Donald] Trump's first two years in office, according to a Washington Post analysis of State Department data.

Among the most affected are the Muslim-majority countries on the president's travel ban list — Yemen, Syria, Iran, Libya, and Somalia — where the number of new arrivals to the United States is heading toward an 81 percent drop by Sept. 30, the end of the second fiscal year under Trump.

Last week, the Supreme Court upheld that ban, paving the way for an even more dramatic decline in arrivals from those countries.

Legal immigration from all Muslim-majority countries is on track to fall by nearly a third.

...Some public officials and immigration experts have raised concerns that the administration's approach targets certain nationalities, discriminating against those from poorer and nonwhite countries.

The Post's analysis also found immigration declines among nationalities not targeted by Trump's travel ban, including nearly all of the countries that typically receive the largest number of immigrant visas from the United States. The number of immigrant visas granted to people from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, China, India, Vietnam, Haiti, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Pakistan, and Afghanistan has also declined. Among the 10 countries that send the highest number of immigrants to the United States annually, only El Salvador is projected to receive more visas under Trump: An increase of 17 percent in his first two fiscal years.

The number of immigrant visas approved for Africans is on pace to fall 15 percent.

Meanwhile, the flow of legal immigrants from Europe has increased slightly, though the total number of visas is still much smaller than that from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
All of this in service to Trump's desire to turn the United States into a white ethnostate.

Which is right in alignment with what's happening across Europe, even as more refugees risk (and lose) their lives trying to find safety.

Patrick Wintour at the Guardian: Mediterranean: More Than 200 Migrants Drown in Three Days. "More than 200 migrants have drowned at sea in the Mediterranean in the past three days, taking the death toll for the year to more than 1,000 and prompting fears that human traffickers are taking greater risks because of a crackdown imposed by the Italian government and the Libyan coastguard. ...The 1,000 deaths landmark was reached on 1 July. It is the fourth year in succession that more than 1,000 migrants have died trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea."

* * *

[CN: Sexual assault; rape culture; toxic masculinity; gun violence; death. Covers entire section.]

Corky Siemaszko at NBC News: Powerful GOP Rep. Jim Jordan Accused of Turning Blind Eye to Sexual Abuse as Ohio State Wrestling Coach.
Rep. Jim Jordan, the powerful Republican congressman from Ohio, is being accused by former wrestlers he coached more than two decades ago at Ohio State University of failing to stop the team doctor from molesting them and other students.

The university announced in April that it was investigating accusations that Dr. Richard Strauss, who died in 2005, abused team members when he was the team doctor from the mid-1970s to late 1990s.

Jordan, who was assistant wrestling coach at the university from 1986 to 1994, has repeatedly said he knew nothing of the abuse until former students began speaking out this spring. His denials, however, have been met with skepticism and anger from some former members of the wrestling team.

Three former wrestlers told NBC News that it was common knowledge that Strauss showered regularly with the students and inappropriately touched them during appointments, and said it would have been impossible for Jordan to be unaware; one wrestler said he told Jordan directly about the abuse.
Emphasis mine.

So, from one horrible aspect of rape culture — people who are supposed to protect you instead protecting abusers — to another: People who are supposed to protect you instead abusing you:


And in another corner of toxic masculinity: Domestic violence as a precursor to acts of mass public violence:


And at the horrendous intersection of not supporting victims and domestic violence as a precursor to mass violence... Eric Fleischauer and Mary Sell at the Decatur Daily: Triple Homicide Leaves Ex-Wife Dead After Protection Request Denied. "Before she and two others were shot dead near Ardmore on Sunday, Debra Ann Rivera twice had asked a judge to order her ex-husband to surrender his guns because of alleged abuse. The request was denied both times. According to the Limestone County Sheriff's Office, Darwin Brazier, 43, used a semi-automatic SKS rifle with a high-capacity magazine to shoot his ex-wife and two other victims multiple times and then shot himself to death near his home in Madison County." Goddammit.

* * *

In other Trump administration fuckery, there's a lot of news, again, about what a giant corrupt asshole Scott Pruitt is, and I just don't even have the energy to parse through it all to cover it. The truth is, I just don't want to hear a single thing about Pruitt unless and until he's handing in his resignation or being marched out the door by security. But please feel welcome to discuss what a colossal shitbird he is!

[CN: White supremacy]


Between this and yesterday's item about the federal judge ruling that students have no right to literacy, this is a full-scale assault on education accessibility, except for the very privileged.

And finally, Paul Campos at NYMag: Broidy Ending Playmate's Hush Payments Doesn't Add Up — Unless He's Covering for Trump. "Now, after making two of the eight payments — the third was due yesterday — Broidy is backing out of the deal. His reasons for doing so make very little legal or practical sense, at least if you assume Broidy actually did have an affair with Bechard. ...By claiming that their agreement is void, Broidy is putting Bechard in a position to tell her story — whatever it may actually be — in whatever forum she likes. I suspect this last point contains a key to understanding why Broidy is trying to back out of the agreement now. Perhaps like so many other people, Broidy has concluded that Donald Trump is a bad business partner." Just as I suggested.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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We Resist: Day 259

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, October 05, 2017
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a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Here are some things in the news today:

Yesterday by me, in case you missed it: Every. Damn. Time.

Arelis R. Hernández and Jenna Johnson at the Washington Post report that Donald Trump is mystified equally by science and by altruism:
Trump passed out yellow bags of rice and then started tossing rolls of towels into the crowd as if he were shooting free throws. The crowd laughed and cheered him on. When he contemplated doing the same with the cans of chicken, the crowd gently told him no.

The church is also distributing water purification kits, and a member explained the process to the president.

"Wait," Trump said, "you put it in dirty water?"

"And then you can drink it after 10 to 12 hours," she explained.

"Would you do it? Would you drink it?" he asked.

"Sure," she said.

"Really?" Trump said, a disgusted look coming across his face.

"Really," she said.

"Is this your company or something?" Trump asked the woman, seeming suspicious of the aggressive pitch.

"No," she said, "I'm part of the church."
There are no words.


* * *

Lisa Friedman at the New York Times: Trump Takes a First Step Toward Scrapping Obama's Global Warming Policy. "The Trump administration will repeal the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's effort to fight climate change, and will ask the public to recommend ways it could be replaced, according to an internal Environmental Protection Agency document. The draft proposal represents the administration's first substantive step toward rolling back the plan, which was designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, after months of presidential tweets and condemnations of Mr. Obama's efforts to reduce climate-warming pollution. But it also lays the groundwork for new, presumably weaker, regulations by asking for the public and industry to offer ideas for a replacement."


Sam Thielman at TPM: Russia Appeared to Target Wisconsin's Elections Body Via a Banner or Popup Ad. "Nearly lost amid the deluge of reports about Kremlin-run Facebook and Twitter campaigns designed to influence the American electorate, the Department of Homeland Security last week messily notified 21 states, including Wisconsin, that Russia had targeted their election systems. The Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) then quietly issued a press release describing an unsuccessful August 2016 cyberattack that took the form of neither a targeted phishing attack nor an attempt to crack a password, but an ad. The elections commission said that the state IT division's protective measures had 'blocked an advertisement embedded in a publicly available website from being displayed on a WEC computer.' When the state Department of Enterprise Technology provided the IP address it had blocked to DHS, the agency identified that address as 'connected to Russian government cyber actors,' according to the release."

Bright Line Watch: The Health of American Democracy: Comparing Perceptions of Experts and the American Public. "The public is quite concerned about the state of U.S. democracy, especially those who disapprove of [Donald] Trump. Americans' ratings of democratic performance are often worse than those of experts, especially in the areas experts identify as the most important. ...Far from being complacent, the American public is in many ways more alarmed than political scientists are about the health of U.S. democracy. They are, for instance, less sanguine about the administration of elections and about protections for free speech and less certain that political parties can compete freely and that people's rights to protest are protected."


[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Jon Delano at CBS Pittsburgh: Pro-Life Rep. Tim Murphy Will Not Seek Re-Election After Reports of Urging Abortion. "Published reports said Murphy met earlier on Wednesday with Republican leadership in Washington DC, after a report surfaced Tuesday that he suggested his mistress have an abortion, despite the congressman's [anti-choice] stance." Welp.

Darryl Fears at the Washington Post: Interior Department Whistleblower Resigns, Calling Ryan Zinke's Leadership a Failure. "An Interior Department executive turned whistleblower who claimed the Trump administration retaliated against him for publicly disclosing how climate change affects Alaska Native communities resigned Wednesday. Joel Clement, a scientist and policy expert, was removed from his job by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke shortly after the disclosure and reassigned to an accounting position for which he has no experience. Clement was among dozens of senior executive service personnel who were quickly, and perhaps unlawfully, reassigned in June, but he was the only person who spoke out."

[CN: White supremacy] David Lewis at the Stranger: We Snuck into Seattle's Super Secret White Nationalist Convention.
White nationalists generally don't want to look like characters out of American History X anymore. Fashion choices at the convention ranged from Ruby Ridge to Mad Men, but most of the people there looked like you might run into them on Capitol Hill or in the U-District. That said, there is a type. According to my observations, the standard Seattle Nazi is a white male under 30 who either works in the tech industry or is going to school to work in the tech industry. "You're also a coder? Do you mind if I send you something I've been working on?" I heard that more than once.

...Speakers encouraged followers to take the Gandhi approach and continue getting punched in the face a la Richard Spencer. The media will have no choice but to turn to its side, their reasoning went. Taylor, Dr. Johnson, and the other speakers are all pretty married to this strategy. They also disapprove of their followers using ethnic slurs in public because it gives the media soundbites to latch onto.

Much bleaker is Dr. Johnson's Seattle-suitable, "secret agent" racism plan. Basically, white nationalists meet in secret at conventions like Northwest Forum while paying "lip service to diversity" at their day jobs. They move into positions of power where they can hire other racists and keep non-whites from getting into the company. Two years ago, this method would have seemed like a total joke, but these guys really do mostly work in tech, and they were doing a lot of networking.

...In the two years since I'd interviewed Charles Krafft, Seattle had somehow gone from virtually no open racists (although I've worked retail at places with pretty open whites only management policies) to being the kind of place to which you'd travel all the way from Sweden to study a new style of racism.
[CN: White supremacy] Zoe Tillman at BuzzFeed: The Justice Department Is Investigating Harvard's Admissions Practices. "'This is further proof that Attorney General Sessions and the Trump administration will continue to invoke civil rights only to further their own political agenda — not provide equal protections for all Americans. It speaks volumes that Jeff Sessions' Justice Department is prioritizing attacking affirmative action at a time when white nationalists are marching openly in the streets,' American Oversight executive director Austin Evers said in a statement." Fucking hell.

[CN: White supremacy] Breanna Edwards at the Root: Federal Judge Officially Dismisses Guilty Verdict Against Joe Arpaio, Who Purposefully Ignored Court Order, Illegally Detained Latinos While Sheriff.
Former Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio will officially have his criminal record scrubbed clean after a federal judge accepted his presidential pardon Wednesday.

According to the Arizona Republic, at the request of Arpaio's defense lawyers as well as lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton dismissed Arpaio's guilty verdict with prejudice, meaning that the case can never be tried again.

You'd think the DOJ lawyers especially would have other things to work on and worry about given, you know, how many accusations of police brutality the nation has been grappling with for the past few years. But, yet, here we are, securing the freedom of a windbag who continually harassed Latino people, has a laundry list of horrific things that happened in his jail while he was running it, and, because one cannot be too much of a racist caricature apparently, continues to insist that our former President Barack Obama's birth certificate is fake.
Sob.

[CN: Homophobia; shooting] Joe Jervis at Joe My God: Man Whose Life Was Saved by Married Lesbian Cop to Speak at National Convention of Anti-LGBT Groups. "Via press release from hate group leader Tony Perkins: 'There were times when we wondered if House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) would ever speak at VVS again. But next week, the miraculous recovery of my good friend will literally take center stage, as Steve makes a return trip to the biggest gathering of pro-family conservatives in the country after a shooting that rocked the country.'" Gross.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

Open Wide...
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Today in White Supremacy White House

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Wednesday, August 02, 2017
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Under the New York Times' innocuous headline "Justice Dept. to Take on Affirmative Action in College Admissions," Charlie Savage reports: "The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department's civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times."

Emphasis mine.

"The project," Savage continues, "is another sign that the civil rights division is taking on a conservative tilt under [Donald] Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions."

Yes, that's a very polite way of putting it. A less polite, and frankly more honest, way of putting it is that the project is another sign that Donald Trump, a long-time public racist, is overseeing a white supremacist presidency and, with the help of of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a long-time public racist, is re-codifying white supremacy into federal law in places where any trace of racial justice measures have been enacted.

Another day of the Trump presidency; another erosion of the progress we've made.

To anyone who ever said any variation on the words "Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the same," fuck you forever.

Open Wide...
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In the News

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Thursday, June 23, 2016
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Here is some stuff in the news today...

The Supreme Court has issued a number of big decisions today:

1. "The Supreme Court has placed new limits on state laws that make it a crime for motorists suspected of drunken driving to refuse alcohol tests. Justices ruled Thursday that police need a search warrant before requiring drivers to take blood alcohol tests. But the court declined to require a warrant for breath tests, which it considers less intrusive."

2. "In a small victory for diversity in higher education, a hamstrung Supreme Court narrowly upheld the affirmative action program at the University of Texas at Austin, effectively allowing the school to keep using race as one of many factors in its admissions process. The case, Fisher v. University of Texas, was one of the oldest cases left undecided on the court's current docket." Crucially: "SCOTUS ruling steps back constitutional scrutiny of affirmative action programs, making them substantially more likely to be upheld."

3. "A tie vote by the Supreme Court is blocking President Barack Obama's immigration plan that sought to shield millions living in the U.S. illegally from deportation. The justices' one-sentence opinion on Thursday effectively kills the plan for the duration of Obama's presidency. A tie vote sets no national precedent but leaves in place the ruling by the lower court. In this case, the federal appeals court in New Orleans said the Obama administration lacked the authority to shield up to 4 million immigrants from deportation and make them eligible for work permits without approval from Congress." Shit. However: "There will be a later appeal, so Obama immigration policy will be revived if Clinton wins and a democratic nominee provides a 5th vote."

4. "SCOTUS ties 4-4 in fight over jurisdiction of tribal courts." (I'm continuing to try to find a complete story on this decision.) UPDATE: Here's a piece by the AP on the decision.

The final three SCOTUS opinions from this session, including the challenge to Texas' abortion restrictions, will be issued on Monday.

* * *

[Content Note: Police brutality; racism; death] Goddammit: "Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., the third of six Baltimore City police officers to stand trial for their alleged role in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray, was found not guilty of second-degree murder today by Judge Barry Williams." Goodson "faced the most serious criminal charges over the death of Freddie Gray" and his case "has been viewed as potentially the state's strongest shot at a conviction, and the defeat deals another blow to both activists' hope and state's attorney Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore’s beleaguered chief prosecutor who many hailed as a hero when she announced the charges on 1 May 2015."

[CN: Guns; terrorism] "A masked man who stormed into a German movie theater Thursday afternoon and opened fire has been shot and killed in a police raid. Authorities say between 20 and 50 people may have been hurt from tear gas used in the attempt to take out the attacker. No one is believed to have been injured by the gunman. One state official said that right now it's unclear if the man was armed with a real gun—it may have been a gas or stun gun. ...The chaos unfurled around 3 p.m. in the Kinopolis cinema complex in Viernheim, a small town outside of Frankfurt in western Germany. The masked man reportedly tried to barricade himself in the theater; after a brief standoff, he was taken out by police."

[CN: Guns] Rep. Steve King continues to be a terrible human being, responding to the Democratic sit-in to protest Republican obstructionism on gun reform by tweeting: "I've had it with the gun grabbing Democrats and their sit in anti 2nd amendment jihad. I'm going to go home and buy a new gun." I mean.

[CN: White supremacy] "An independent candidate for Congress from Tennessee has been swept up in a wave of criticism for his campaign billboard vowing to 'Make American White Again.' Rick Tyler, who is running for the 3rd Congressional District in the northeastern part of the state, said he put up the billboard alongside Highway 411 in Polk County to make a point that "the 'Leave It to Beaver,' 'Ozzie and Harriet,' 'Mayberry' America of old was vastly superior to what we are experiencing today.'" 1. America was never "white." Never. 2. Whoooooooooops your idea of "tradition."

Congratulations to Erin O'Flaherty, who was crowned Miss Missouri on Saturday, making her the Miss America pageant's first-ever openly lesbian contestant. "'I'm on cloud nine really just to be Miss Missouri,' she said. 'I don't know that I intended to be the first, but I am. So I'm very excited about it.' O'Flaherty believes she also will be the first openly gay woman to compete in the Miss America scholarship pageant, which is scheduled for Sept. 11 in Atlantic City, New Jersey."

Whoa: "Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Australian National University have developed new technology that aims to make the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) even more sensitive to faint ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. ...Although not part of the original Advanced LIGO design, injecting the new squeezed vacuum source into the LIGO detector could help double its sensitivity. This would allow detection of gravitational waves that are far weaker or that originate from farther away than is possible now."

YESSSSSSS! "You've seen Spy, right? I'm not sure if I just exist in a bubble and didn't hear it talked about much, or if it really is, even still, upsettingly underseen. Because oh wow is that movie phenomenal. And Paul Feig knows it. He created a perfect vehicle for Melissa McCarthy, and that's clear. But the supporting characters in this movie are equally brilliant, not least of all Jason Statham's face-off-machine-obsessed Rick Ford. Ford is such a great character, in fact, that Feig isn't done with him. He says Spy is 'the first thing [he] did that [he] set up to be a possible franchise and Melissa is dying to do it.' And Statham's Ford is a huge part of the story he already has planned out.
'Susan Cooper is one of my favourite characters I've ever come up with,' continues Feig, 'but Rick Ford is possibly the one I'll take to the grave with me. Will he get any more self-aware in the sequel? No, god no. He'll get less self-aware.' This is incredible news. In the current climate of unending sequels, this is a franchise we can firmly get behind. How can Rick Ford possibly get less self-aware? I have no idea, but I'm deeply upset that we can't find out right this instant." SAME!!!

And finally! "Senior Boxer & His Guinea Pig Copilot Are the Coolest Duo Since Batman & Robin." OMGGGGGGG LOVE.

Open Wide...
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In the News

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Monday, May 02, 2016
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Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Terrorism; death] Fucking hell: "Two [redacted] car bombs claimed by ISIS killed at least 32 people and wounded 75 others in the center of the southern Iraqi city of Samawa on Sunday, police and medics said. The first blast was near a local government building and the second one about 65 yards away at a bus station, police sources said. The death toll was expected to keep rising. ...Meanwhile, two police officers were killed and 23 people wounded in a suicide car bomb attack on police headquarters in the south-eastern Turkish city of Gaziantep, the governor and police sources said, in one of two attacks on security forces on Sunday. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but security sources said police raided the home of a suspected ISIS militant believed to have carried out the attack and detained his father for DNA tests and questioning." I am just so deeply sad and angry about the death and injury and terror and destruction wreaked by IS. And horrified by how little coverage this weekend's terrorist attacks in Iraq and Turkey have gotten in Western media.

[CN: Financial insecurity] "Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla announced that Puerto Rico's government will not make nearly $370m in bond payments due Monday after a failure to restructure or find a political solution to the US territory's spiralling public debt crisis. Garcia said Sunday that he had issued an executive order suspending payments on debt owed by the island's Government Development Bank, a default that will likely prompt lawsuits from creditors and could be a prelude to a deadline to a much larger payment due 1 July. The governor said Puerto Rico can't pay the bonds without cutting essential services." If you haven't already seen [CN: video autoplays] John Oliver's terrific segment on Puerto Rico, I highly recommend it.

[CN: Anti-choice terrorism] Jessica Mason Pieklo has another great piece on Robert Dear: "After a full day of testimony, which included an investigator's account that Dear had stopped at a crisis pregnancy center (CPC) before moving on to the Planned Parenthood, it was clear that neither the prosecution nor the defense wanted to talk about the central issue of Robert Lewis Dear Jr.'s case: anti-choice rhetoric and violence."

[CN: Breast cancer] This sounds encouraging: "Scientists say they now have a near-perfect picture of the genetic events that cause breast cancer. The study, published in Nature, has been described as a 'milestone' moment that could help unlock new ways of treating and preventing the disease. The largest study of its kind unpicked practically all the errors that cause healthy breast tissue to go rogue. Cancer Research UK said the findings were an important stepping-stone to new drugs for treating cancer. To understand the causes of the disease, scientists have to understand what goes wrong in our DNA that makes healthy tissue turn cancerous. The international team looked at all 3 billion letters of people's genetic code—their entire blueprint of life—in 560 breast cancers. They uncovered 93 sets of instructions, or genes, that if mutated, can cause tumours. Some have been discovered before, but scientists expect this to be the definitive list, barring a few rare mutations."

At Think Progress, Ian Millhiser details "Four Major Decisions to Expect from the Supreme Court Soon," on Affirmative Action (Fisher v. University of Texas), Birth Control (Zubik v. Burwell), Abortion (Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt), and Immigration (United States v. Texas).

[CN: Child abuse] Ted Cruz continues to be comprehensively awful: "A youthful protester who interrupted his rally late Sunday evening should get a spanking, Ted Cruz suggested to his audience in La Porte, Indiana. Such a punishment, he added, would have gone a long way in changing the behavior of Donald Trump. 'All right, apparently there's a young man who's having some problems,' Cruz said, as the young heckler shouted, 'You suck!' Cruz responded, 'Thank you, son.' 'Children should actually speak with respect,' he continued. 'Imagine what a different world it would be if someone told Donald Trump that years ago.'" This gross comment comes right on the heels of new research that finds " spanking is associated with troubling outcomes—like increased aggression, increased anti-social behavior, and mental health problems later in life."

[CN: Fat hatred; weight loss talk; disordered eating] I don't even know where to fucking begin with this article in the New York Times about "Biggest Loser" contestants gaining back weight. On the one hand, it's great that here is more evidence of what fat people have been saying about our own lived experiences. On the other hand, the abysmal language peppered throughout the piece! Like "what obesity research has consistently shown is that dieters are at the mercy of their own bodies" and "that shouldn't be interpreted to mean we are doomed to battle our biology or remain fat." As but two examples. I don't feel like I'm "at the mercy" of my body (as if I am somehow a separate thing from my body!) and I certainly don't feel "doomed to remain fat." For fuck's sake.

In better news, this is very neat: "The comet known as C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS) has a lot going for it. For starters, it's the first comet ever detected without a tail—a trail of dust and ice that sublimates into space as the sun heats the frozen artifacts. It's also thought to have formed in the same time and place as Earth, meaning that the strange comet may contain the same building blocks that formed our planet, kept chilled and pristine and waiting for scientists to study them."

Cool! "Newfound Jellyfish Looks Like an Alien Spacecraft." I love jellyfish. As is probably obvious given that I have one tattooed on my body, lol!

And finally! "Why Rescued Is My Favorite Dog Breed." Love. ♥

Open Wide...
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In the News

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Friday, December 11, 2015
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Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Terrorism; religious extremism] "An examination of digital equipment recovered from the home of the couple who killed 14 people in San Bernardino last week has led FBI investigators to believe the shooters were planning an even larger assault, according to federal government sources. Investigators on Thursday continued to search for digital footprints left by Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, scouring a downtown San Bernardino lake for electronic items, including a hard drive that the couple was hoping to destroy, sources told The Times. ...Farook and Malik were in the final planning stages of an assault on a location or building that housed a lot more people than the Inland Regional Center, possibly a nearby school or college, according to federal sources familiar with the widening investigation." Fuck.

[CN: Islamophobia] Welp: "Americans are more fearful about the likelihood of another terrorist attack than at any other time since the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, a gnawing sense of dread that has helped lift Donald J. Trump to a new high among Republican primary voters, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll." So Trump will fearmonger even more, making people even more scared—and thus dangerous—as a political strategy. Cool.

[CN: Police brutality; racism] As the trial of the first office to be tried in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore continues and heads toward its close, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Kevin Davis "urged residents to react 'respectfully' when a verdict is announced." Goddamn.

[CN: White privilege; entitlement] Here is Imani Gandy on Fisher v. University of Texas, a case she aptly describes as "practically an allegory for white entitlement." At the center of the case is Abigail Fisher. Writes Gandy: Fisher is "the latest in a line of white women who have filed lawsuits seeking to destroy affirmative action policies because they felt entitled to attend the school of their choosing, oblivious to the fact that destroying these policies will put everyone but white men at a disadvantage. It's hard not to draw the conclusion that Fisher's lawsuit is a product of her entitlement. She's noted that all of her friends and family went to the University of Texas at Austin, and so she felt like she was entitled to go too, never mind the fact that she didn't have the grades to get in. And if getting her way means destroying a policy that has been proven to benefit white women the most, then that's what Fisher evidently intends to do."

[CN: Rape culture; child abuse] Russell Taylor, who served as the head of convicted former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle's charity and accomplice in Fogle's child exploitation, has been sentenced to 27 years in prison after pleading "guilty to 13 federal crimes during his sentencing hearing—12 counts of child exploitation and one count of distributing child pornography." I will never believe Subway did not, as they ludicrously claim, have any idea this was going on. Fuck them.

[CN: Privacy violations] "Ted Cruz's presidential campaign is using psychological data based on research spanning tens of millions of Facebook users, harvested largely without their permission, to boost his surging White House run and gain an edge over Donald Trump and other Republican rivals, the Guardian can reveal. A little-known data company, now embedded within Cruz's campaign and indirectly financed by his primary billionaire benefactor [leading Republican donor Robert Mercer], paid researchers at Cambridge University to gather detailed psychological profiles about the US electorate using a massive pool of mainly unwitting US Facebook users built with an online survey." This is pretty much the exact scenario that conservatives say they fear from Big Government Liberals. Will Cruz's supporters care when it's their guy doing it? Probably not!

[CN: Class warfare] Um: "US chemical giants Dow Chemical and DuPont have announced a plan to merge, in a deal valuing them at $130bn (£86bn). The all-share deal will eventually lead to the merged company, initially to be called DowDuPont, being split in three. ...If the merger is cleared by regulators, the new company will be owned equally by current Dow and DuPont shareholders. ...At the same time, DuPont announced a cost-saving plan that will involve cutting about 10% of staff." A cost-saving plan, huh? Not for those workers! But who cares, as long as the shareholders who just sit back doing fuck-all and making money off the back of other people's labor make some money.

[CN: Moving gif at link] Wow: "Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a tiny star with a giant, cloudy storm, using data from NASA's Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes. The dark storm is akin to Jupiter's Great Red Spot: a persistent, raging storm larger than Earth. 'The star is the size of Jupiter, and its storm is the size of Jupiter's Great Red Spot,' said John Gizis of the University of Delaware, Newark. 'We know this newfound storm has lasted at least two years, and probably longer.' Gizis is the lead author of a new study appearing in The Astrophysical Journal. While planets have been known to have cloudy storms, this is the best evidence yet for a star that has one."

Melissa McCarthy has unveiled her holiday collection, which "incorporates a mix of party-ready favorites (in the form of a jumpsuit and sparkly skirts) with travel-friendly pieces as well (just check out the comfy-meets-cute track pant and jeweled sweatshirt!)." I'm not super into her collection, even though I wish I were, but maybe you will love it!

Ben Affleck got a massive back tattoo of a phoenix. Okay!

And finally! "18 Hybrid Animals That Are Hard to Believe Actually Exist." I'm not sure why it's hard to believe these creatures exist, but it's sure neat to see them!

Open Wide...
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