Here is some stuff in the news today...
President Obama and members of his administration continue to advocate for the Iran nuclear deal, arguing that it will facilitate peace. Not everyone is convinced! By whom I mean: Republicans and their BFF Netanyahu.
[Content Note: Class warfare] In good news: "Kansan politicians tried to force public administrators to make life harder for poor people on welfare, passing a controversial law earlier this year to limit the amount of money public assistance benefits cards can withdraw from ATM machines at any one time to $25. But the public servants are fighting back, announcing Tuesday that they would rescind the law." GOOD.
[CN: Transphobia] In more good news: "Today, five national organizations introduced Schools In Transition: A Guide for Supporting Transgender Students in K-12 Schools, a first-of-its-kind publication for school administrations, teachers, and parents about how to provide safe and supportive environments for all transgender students, kindergarten through twelfth grade." The guide is available for download here.
[CN: War on agency; NB: Not only women need access to reproductive healthcare] In yet more good news: Democratic Indiana State Senator Karen Tallian, who is running against Mike Pence for governor, calls out Pence for his campaign against Planned Parenthood—and, by the way, isn't afraid of the word abortion. "And take note: This is not merely a war on abortion services, but a war against an organization that has become an icon for providing low-cost services, such as contraception and cancer screenings, to millions of women across this country." I LOVE THAT. And I love her! If you have some money you're looking to donate to progressive causes and/or progressive women, consider Karen Tallian!
[CN: Homophobia] "Same-sex couples across the Philippines went to their local civil registries Monday to apply for marriage licenses, but were roundly rebuffed by local officials because the country's civil code bans same-sex marriage. One activist who sought to get a marriage license says that even though he knew he would be denied, he felt it important to force officials to reject him in order to bring attention and 'bolster' a case before the country's Supreme Court that challenges the constitutionality of the marriage ban." I wish them safety, good luck, and justice!
[CN: Police brutality; guns] In news that should surprise no one: "Mere sight of a gun makes police—and public—more aggressive, experts say." No kidding.
[CN: Police misconduct; classism; racism; dehumanization] A Sarasota police officer who threw "peanuts to a handcuffed, homeless inmate" and barked "dog commands" at the man "resigned from the department, minutes before he was scheduled to be interviewed by Internal Affairs." The Mayor says all the same: "I don't worry because the men and women we have within the Sarasota Police Department is one of the greatest group of people that you're gonna find anywhere." Meanwhile, Michael Barfield of the ACLU says he hopes "that no other department will hire him. But as we've seen many times, officers resign and then move on to another department. Sometimes these resignations are just a manipulation of the system." For fuck's sake.
[CN: Guns; terrorism] Today in domestic terrorism which will never be called that ever: "Three North Carolina men fearing a government takeover and martial law stockpiled weapons, ammunition, and tactical gear while attempting to rig home-made explosives, according to charges announced by the Justice Department on Monday. ...According to the documents, both Litteral and Campbell spoke openly about their opposition to Jade Helm 15, a series of ongoing special forces training missions in several Southwestern states that has drawn suspicion from residents who fear it is part of a planned military takeover. In addition to ammunition for a long-range .338 caliber rifle, the authorities said Litteral purchased hand-held radios, Kevlar helmets, body armor and face masks in preparation for an armed resistance to the feared military occupation."
[CN: Death; drowning] Very sad: "Natalia Molchanova: world's 'greatest freediver' feared dead after failing to surface."
[CN: War on agency; video autoplays at link] The anti-choice group targeting Planned Parenthood with heavily edited videos has released a fifth video, because of course they have.
Netflix has announced, in addition to their "unlimited time off" policy, a new "unlimited leave policy for new moms and dads that allows them to take off as much time as they want during the first year after a child's birth or adoption." That's really good news—provided that the company really does allow its employees to take the time they need without coercive communication that makes it a policy only in theory but not in practice.
And finally! Cat dentist. LOLOLOL.
In the News
Crickets
[Content Note: Police brutality; death; white supremacy.]
On July 26, a white 19-year-old named Zachary Hammond was killed by police in South Carolina, in a manner that will sound depressingly familiar:
A Seneca police officer shot the teen twice on Sunday during an arrest for suspected drugs, according to Greenville Online.My condolences to Hammond's family and friends. I hope that they have access to the support they need, and that they will find something resembling justice.
Police say Hammond was driving another woman to a parking lot, where an undercover agent had arranged to purchase drugs from her.
The officer got out of his marked vehicle and approached Hammond's car with his weapon drawn, Police Chief John Covington said, noting that this is standard practice for a "narcotics" investigation. That's when, according to the chief, Hammond accelerated his car toward the officer, local Fox affiliate WHNS notes. Covington maintains that his officer "fired two shots in self-defense" as Hammond "drove directly at him."
But the Hammond family's attorney, Eric Bland, sees a different picture when looking at the teen's newly released autopsy report.
"It is clearly, clearly from the back," Bland told Greenville Online on Wednesday. "It is physically impossible for him to be trying to flee or run over the officer that shot him."
Hammond's death has not garnered nearly the same media coverage as the black women and men who have been killed by police and/or died in police custody. However: #BlackLivesMatter activists—you know, the ones who are constantly accused by assholes of being divisive race-baiters—have been sending up flares about the killing of Zachary Hammond.
And Nick Wing has some terrific observations about who is talking about Zachary Hammond, and who isn't, here: "A Cop Killed a White Teen and the #AllLivesMatter Crowd Said Nothing."
Hammond's whiteness has certainly factored into the response to his death. No public outcry has questioned the media's use of family photos that appear to show a younger boy, still wearing braces. No wave of Internet denizens has scoured the victim's social media profiles in search of ways to somehow blame him for his own death. Nobody appears to have called for a discussion of white-on-white crime. No stories have been written about whether Hammond's parents had criminal records or asked if he was ever in trouble at school. At least not yet.Wing goes on to observe that there are three reasons (certainly among others) for the lack of national media attention on the police killing of Hammond. First, that no video has been released, "and there's nothing cable news loves more than a shockingly violent clip to play on loop." Secondly, that there's no racial narrative to this case: Hammond was white and the officer who shot and killed him is white. But, says, Wing:
These points are no consolation to a dead 19-year-old. But they differ from the reality of what black people routinely face in similar situations.
Hammond's death also highlights a truth many white Americans seem reluctant to face: that police violence can affect anyone—their white friends, cousins, brothers, sisters, even themselves. Though bad policing may take a disproportionate toll on communities of color, the calls for reform now being voiced loudest by people of color would benefit all of us.
Many people in the Black Lives Matter movement have been saying this since the beginning, which is why, in the absence of much mainstream media coverage, black Twitter has taken the most active role in making sure Hammond's name and story are heard.
...If the snide retort to #BlackLivesMatter is that #AllLivesMatter—a shallow rejoinder that misses the point entirely—the resounding silence around Hammond's death exposes these complaints for what they often are: narrow-minded attempts to squelch honest discussions about the black experience. If these people truly believe that all lives matter, they should speak out about Hammond's death, just as they should have spoken out about the questionable deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Natasha McKenna or Ryan Bolinger, a white man killed by Iowa police in June.
there is a third, more basic difference surrounding his death.And instead of admitting that perhaps they have been overestimating the police, affording them too much good faith each and every time they kill people, despite mountainous evidence to the contrary, the white folks (especially) who reflexively defend police will merely keep silent even as they are faced with evidence that police killings must be scrutinized and stopped.
White America's apathetic response to the killing of a young white man is not just evident on Twitter. It also appears to be the prevalent attitude in the mostly white town of Seneca and in surrounding Oconee County, which is almost 90 percent white. The community there has not organized protests or demonstrations. They haven't held rallies or vigils—or at least any that have been well-attended enough to attract even local news coverage. The national media aren't likely to parachute into a local story when nobody there, apart from Hammond's parents, seems to think it is a story.
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that white Americans have, for the most part, collectively shrugged at police violence. Polls have repeatedly shown that white people are much more likely to have confidence in the police, suggesting that they're either more willing to believe that officers are justified in their actions or that the system can be trusted to sort it out if they're not. As Ebony's Jamilah Lemieux notes, speaking up about Hammond now would create a conflict for many of those people: "#ZacharyHammond isn't going to get the outrage he deserves because it would force folks to admit their consistent defense of police is wrong."
Better to just let police going on killing people without meaningful accountability than to admit that maybe they have been catastrophically wrong.
The truth is, many white people would rather be silent for Zachary than speak up for black people.
Whoa
"An image of the distribution of GRBs on the sky at a distance of 7 billion light years, centred on the newly discovered ring. The positions of the GRBs are marked by blue dots and the Milky Way is indicated for reference, running from left to right across the image. Credit: L. Balazs."
Via the Royal Astronomical Society:
A Hungarian-US team of astronomers have found what appears to be the largest feature in the observable universe: a ring of nine gamma ray bursts—and hence galaxies—5 billion light years across. The scientists, led by Prof Lajos Balazs of Konkoly Observatory in Budapest, report their work in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.Oh no big deal. Just a discovery that could yield a radical revision of current theories of the evolution of the cosmos! Just another day's work.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous events in the universe, releasing as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun does over its 10 billion year lifetime. They are thought to be the result of massive stars collapsing into black holes. Their huge luminosity helps astronomers to map out the location of distant galaxies, something the team exploited.
The GRBs that make up the newly discovered ring were observed using a variety of space- and ground-based observatories (the sample is listed in the Gamma Ray Burst Online Index). They appear to be at very similar distances from us—around 7 billion light years—in a circle 36° across on the sky, or more than 70 times the diameter of the Full Moon. This implies that the ring is more than 5 billion light years across, and according to Prof Balazs there is only a 1 in 20,000 probability of the GRBs being in this distribution by chance.
Most current models indicate that the structure of the cosmos is uniform on the largest scales. This 'Cosmological Principle' is backed up by observations of the early universe and its microwave background signature, seen by the WMAP and Planck satellites. Other recent results and this new discovery challenge the principle, which sets a theoretical limit of 1.2 billion light years for the largest structures. The newly discovered ring is almost five times as large.
...Prof Balazs comments: "If we are right, this structure contradicts the current models of the universe. It was a huge surprise to find something this big – and we still don’t quite understand how it came to exist at all."
The team now want to find out more about the ring, and establish whether the known processes for galaxy formation and large scale structure could have led to its creation, or if astronomers need to radically revise their theories of the evolution of the cosmos.
GOP Debate Line-Up Announced
[Content Note: Video autoplays at link.]
Fox has announced the line-up for the first Republican debate tomorrow in Cleveland, and it was precisely as predicted yesterday:
1. Gold Toilet Aficionado Donald Trump
2. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush
3. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker
4. Professor of Bible Bigotry Mike Huckabee
5. Dr. Ben Carson
6. Texas Senator Ted Cruz
7. Florida Senator Marco Rubio
8. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul
9. Pugilist Chris Christie
10. Ohio Governor John Kasich
What a terrific line-up! Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee on one stage! The Republican Party must be so proud!
Well, they'll definitely be pretending that they're freaked out about Trump going rogue or whatever, but—and this cannot be said too many times—Trump is the uncensored id of their disgusting party, just plainly stating mainstream conservative positions without varnish, and the Republican Party leadership couldn't be more thrilled (behind closed doors) that he's rallying the base and doing it in such an outrageous way that he can make assholes like Scott Walker look reasonable by comparison.
Meanwhile, the moderators for the debate—Fox News' Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Chris Wallace—are busily readying themselves for this sideshow, and Kelly says they "have a plan" if Trump ignores the rules, "but we're not going to share it with you." Oh you cheeky scamp! I bet their plan is telling Chris Christie he's free to punch Donald Trump in the face now. Frankly, if that's not their plan, they should rethink their plan. You can have that one for free, Fox!
Anyway.
I figured that former Texas Governor Rick Perry would take it pretty hard, being shut out of the debate due to low polling, but I never imagined he'd take it so hard that he'd immediately switch careers and become a stand-up comedian:
GOOD ONE, RICK PERRY! You're definitely a much better comedian than you are a politician! CHOOSE YOUR CHOICE, MY FRIEND!
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker moseyonby: "Do you have a close friendship (or more than one) that has been mainly conducted through writing? As in, a pen pal, long term faraway correspondent, email buddy, or whatever? And if so, what does this relationship mean to you?"
TV Corner: So You Think You Can Dance
[Content Note: Spoilers for last night's episode of So You Think You Can Dance.]
There were several great performances last night, and I'm really loving the new format which allows us to see women dancing together onstage without men, but my favorite routine last night was this piece danced by Megz and Edson:
Video Description: Megz, a young Latina hip hop dancer, and Edson, a young Latino contemporary dancer, perform a contemporary routine choreographed by Talia Favia and set to "You There" by Aquilo.
* * *
Here come the major spoilers, so if you don't want to know, skip this section!
I was very relieved that Asaf was finally booted, especially considering his garbage routine with Kate, during the judging for which the judges didn't even mention that the choreographer had clearly taken out the lifts about which Kate expressed anxiety to Travis. The guy was dangerous because he wasn't good enough. I'm glad to see him go for the sake of the other dancers alone.
I was very sad to see Marissa go. I would have been sad no matter which of the three stage dancers it had been, to be honest. It's a really strong field this season.
What did you think?
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Class warfare.]
Fast food workers in NY just won a $15/hr wage.—Paramedic Jens Rushing, in a Facebook post that has gone viral, for good damn reason.
I'm a paramedic. My job requires a broad set of skills: interpersonal, medical, and technical skills, as well as the crucial skill of performing under pressure. I often make decisions on my own, in seconds, under chaotic circumstances, that impact people's health and lives. I make $15/hr.
And these burger flippers think they deserve as much as me?
Good for them.
Look, if any job is going to take up someone's life, it deserves a living wage. If a job exists and you have to hire someone to do it, they deserve a living wage. End of story. There's a lot of talk going around my workplace along the lines of, "These guys with no education and no skills think they deserve as much as us? Fuck those guys." And elsewhere on FB: "I'm a licensed electrician, I make $13/hr, fuck these burger flippers."
And that's exactly what the bosses want! They want us fighting over who has the bigger pile of crumbs so we don't realize they made off with almost the whole damn cake. Why are you angry about fast food workers making two bucks more an hour when your CEO makes four hundred TIMES what you do? It's in the bosses' interests to keep your anger directed downward, at the poor people who are just trying to get by, like you, rather than at the rich assholes who consume almost everything we produce and give next to nothing for it.
My company, as they're so fond of telling us in boosterist emails, cleared 1.3 billion dollars last year. They expect guys supporting families on 26-27k/year to applaud that. And that's to say nothing of the techs and janitors and cashiers and bed pushers who make even less than us, but are as absolutely crucial to making a hospital work as the fucking CEO or the neurosurgeons. Can they pay us more? Absolutely. But why would they? No one's making them.
The workers in NY *made* them. They fought for and won a living wage. So how incredibly petty and counterproductive is it to fuss that their pile of crumbs is bigger than ours? Put that energy elsewhere. Organize. Fight. Win.
Today in Fat Hatred
[Content Note: Fat hatred; child abuse; moving gifs at link.]
In news that will surprise no one who has been a fat kid, parented a fat kid, or had even a modicum of awareness about how fat kids are treated, a new study has found that physical education teachers have a bias against fat students:
The study of nearly 240 PE trainees and non-PE trainees found both had anti-fat bias, but PE teachers were almost four times as likely to hold implicit negative beliefs about [fat] children, and almost three times as likely to think they were not as clever as other children.This is something that comes up in studies on fat hatred over and over and over: That being fat is worse than death.
Study author Marita Lynagh, a senior lecturer at the University of Newcastle, said her research tested the trainee teachers for both explicit bias—that is, negative views they were willing to admit—and implicit bias, using word association to see what concepts they associated with excess weight.
"What we found was [the trainees] almost expect obese children not to not be good, even in things that don't have anything to do with physical activity," Dr Lynagh said. "They actually expect the children to not be as good socially, or with things like reasoning skills, things that have nothing to do with weight."
...About 30 per cent of the participants in the study said being obese was "one of the worst things that could happen to a child."
"In their view it was pretty much worse than dying," she said.
There are studies showing majorities of thin people who believe being fat would be a worse fate than dying. There are studies showing majorities of respondents who believe that fat people would be better off dead.
And, as I have pointed out many, many times in this space, much of the "war on obesity" in this country (and other countries) is explicitly eliminationist and centered around promoting weight loss even when weight loss can only come at the cost of a fat person's life.
This is the level of alarmism that fat hatred has reached: There are people tasked with the education of children who believe that fat children would be better off dead.
Shutting Off the Gaslight
[CN: Intimate Partner Abuse: emotional, physical, sexual, psychological.]
Here is a thing about recovering from intimate partner abuse: it is not as simple as mere physical removal from the abuser.
Abusers are some of the most persuasive people in the world. Over time, they can build an impressive edifice explaining their own behavior as perfectly normal, your relationship with them as really quite good (or at least as good as you deserve), your friends as inferior, and your own behavior the real problem. Etc.
It might seem obvious to outsiders that your intimate partner is pulling the wool over your eyes, but that’s not what it feels like. In my own experience, it actually feels like a light going on. Ohhhh, so that’s why he* likes to brag about how intimidating he is—it’s not to scare you! It’s only to scare the “bad people.” Of course. Ahhh, now it makes sense why he gets angry when people don’t obey his orders. It’s not that he’s controlling; he just emotionally needs certain things to be certain exact ways. And as long as he has clearly explained his demands, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that other people will immediately accede to his wishes without negotiation or discussion. Now it all makes sense!
Room by room, my intimate partner built a prison of these explanations—but in the flickering gaslight that illuminated them, I believed him when he explained that it was really a palace.
Because here’s the other thing: abusers aren’t just persuasive, they’re master propagandists. (Sometimes they know they’re lying and manipulating, but frequently, they believe their own propaganda, which makes it even more convincing.) Good propaganda, whether it’s selling fast food, a nation’s wars, or an intimate partner’s bullshit, always begins with something you, the recipient, already believe or value. For example, most people would like to be more attractive to their preferred sex(es)—so advertising shows how Brand X cigarettes (or beer, or cars, or face cream) will make you hawt and sexxay. Most people think children should be kept safe, so advertising shows how Brand Zed tires keep babies safe when riding in cars, or that Brand Y sunscreen is so effective it can protect even delicate kid skin from burnng. And so forth. Take something good, and tie it to what you're selling.
And most abusers genuinely have good qualities, things we value. Abusers start with that to sell themselves. I had genuinely good times with my former partner—giddyingly high “ups,” in fact. I fell in love with those good aspects, so it wasn’t much of a step to convince me of the most basic propaganda: the Good Guy was the Real Guy.
It helped that so many people enjoyed being around the Good Guy. One of the worst disservices that pop culture does when portraying abuse is making abusers so fucking obvious. In films and tv they’re brooding angerballs with all the charisma of a fire ant. But my abuser, when in a good mood, was charming, enthusiastic, expansive. The life of the party! The center of attention! His sense of humor matched mine; we delighted in wordplay and repartee. Other liked to match wits and conversation with him too (mostly). He was overpowering—but when he was in a good mood, it was overpoweringly fun and exciting.
The Bad Guy? Well, there were a million ways to explain him away. He was a fluke, an aberration. Indeed, I was meant to be impressed that the Bad Guy wasn’t Even Worse Guy. He would detail the terrible physical things he felt like doing to the people who angered him—but he didn’t actually do those things. He just liked to describe them, explaining in great specificity how he could exact violent revenge. But since he didn’t actually carry out those plans, well! There was certainly nothing scary or abnormal about his frequent angry fantasies!
And this was a confidence, of course, shared only with me. So it seemed perfectly reasonable when he asked me not to talk about his anger with others. His explanations were obscuring the truth, were keeping me from getting outsider perspectives that might have revealed it. But it always seemed like he was just flipping on another lightswitch, giving me insight, making me his confidante. Building intimacy. I was drawn deeper into his world, his logic, and more and more lights went on. I could truly understand him, like others couldn’t—or so I thought.
Abusive intimate partners are so very good at this that, even if the relationship breaks up, their lights remain on in the survivor’s mental prison. I knew, for example, that abusers often make their partners feel worthless, as if no one else will ever love them. But because everything was filtered through his gaslight, I kept making excuses. My feelings of worthlessness weren’t his fault. They were simply my own thoughts, reflecting how very right he’d been about all my faults! He’d never explicitly said the words “You are worthless and no one else will ever love you,” after all. I was just looking in the mirror! That it was illuminated mostly by gaslight slipped right by me.
I can remember exactly when the first gaslight went out. I was confronted with things he’d said about me to others, in writing. Needless to say, they didn’t reflect the way he spoke to me directly. I was hurt. I was confused.
A light went out—and paradoxically, I could see clearly.
It kept happening. A friend told me she’d always been impressed with how I could “take it” from him—the “jokes” he made that actually were insults. Lights off! Suddenly I saw that shabby little room for what it was—a chamber of constant belittling.
I assured a new mutual acquaintance that he’d love the Good Guy, the Fun Guy. (The Bad Guy, I still thought, wasn’t real.) But when the Bad Guy emerged, the new acquaintance seemed to think that this one was in fact, very real. So real as to be repellent. Another light went off, and another truth revealed itself.
But this process takes time—months, years, maybe decades. And here’s the thing: in my experience, it’s really hard to know how far along you are in seeing that truth. Every now and then, you just mentally stumble—and when you stand up, the gaslight is gone and another wall of the prison reveals itself. You can name the abuse: it was bullying, it was coercion, it was rape. And now that the light is finally off, you can actually see your own wounds, and start extracting the poison that’s still affecting your life, your work, your relationships.
(And maybe you can see why survivors need patience from those who care about us. Until we can recognize something like sexual abuse, it’s hard for us to even begin to approach, say, a sexual dysfunction. Multiply that by so many aspects of life, and you see why recovery is often slow, and goes in fits and starts.)
I can say this, though: there is nothing like the feeling when you finally can look around and see how damn much of the gas has been switched off. Maybe not all of the prison is gone, but you know you’re no longer living in its hulking ruins. I know I don’t have to agree with my former partner’s framing of me, our relationship. I can call his justifications what they are: guilt trips, intimidation, bullying, manipulation, and deception.
It’s like that [CN: video autoplays at link] moment from Labyrinth when Sarah finally remembers the line that she can never quite recall, and repeats it wonderingly to the Goblin King: “You have no power over me.”
I’ve shut off the gaslight. I can see clearly.
And you… you have no power over me.
*[Because I am speaking of my own experiences, I am using male pronouns for my abusers, who are portrayed in composite in this piece. This in no way is intended to imply that only male-identified intimate partner abusers behave in these ways.]
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
[Content Note: There are flickering lights in this video.]
Aretha Franklin & George Michael: "I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)"
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Anti-choice terrorism] Today in anti-choice terrorism: "An unidentified person poured gasoline on a recently laid foundation and a security guard's car early Saturday morning at the construction site of the Planned Parenthood facility in New Orleans. ...Video surveillance reportedly captured the incident and law enforcement is investigating. ...Planned Parenthood cleared an administrative hurdle last month toward the construction of the facility, the Center for Choice, which would expand access to abortion in the New Orleans area, after the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals rescinded regulations that may have prevented it from opening such a facility."
[CN: Terrorism; abduction] Goddammit: "At least seven people were killed and about 20 others were kidnapped by suspected Boko Haram militants in an overnight raid on a village near Cameroon's northern border, a senior military officer said Tuesday." In better news: "The Nigerian army has freed 178 people being held hostage by Boko Haram jihadists including more than 100 children, it said late Sunday, as it carries out a regional offensive aimed at rooting out the insurgency."
[CN: Police misconduct; misogynoir] Sandra Bland's family has filed a civil rights lawsuit against state trooper Brian Encinia, who arrested and assaulted her, "and against other officials they believe contributed to her death in a small-town Texas jail on 13 July. The suit, filed on Tuesday, claims that Bland wrongfully died. 'Her constitutional rights were violated,' Cannon Lambert, the family's attorney, said. He said that the legal action is an attempt to force more transparency from officials."
[CN: Wildfires] More than 13,000 California residents have been evacuated "as firefighters struggle to contain some 20 wildfires. Some 9,000 firefighters worked throughout Monday in steep terrain and rugged conditions, officials said. The biggest blaze—the so-called Rocky fire north of San Francisco—has already consumed more than 90 square miles (233 sq km) of land." Fuck.
[CN: Police misconduct; racist violence; racist slurs] What the everloving shit: "A police officer in Alabama proposed murdering a black resident and creating bogus evidence to suggest the killing was in self-defence, the Guardian has learned. Officer Troy Middlebrooks kept his job and continues to patrol Alexander City after authorities there paid the man $35,000 to avoid being publicly sued over the incident. ...The payment was made to the black resident, Vincent Bias, after a secret recording of Middlebrooks's remarks was played to police chiefs and the mayor. Elected city councillors said they were not consulted. A copy of the recording was obtained by the Guardian. 'This town is ridiculous,' Bias, 49, said in an interview. 'The police here feel they can do what they want, and often they do.' Alexander City police chief Willie Robinson defended Middlebrooks. 'He was just talking. He didn't really mean that,' he said in an interview."
[CN: Homophobia] Speaking of Alabama: "An Alabama state senate committee approved a bill on Monday that would get the state's probate judges out of the marriage license business. ...'Sen. Greg Albritton, the bill's sponsor, says the bill could be a solution to lingering disputes over gay marriage.'" Of course.
[CN: Animal abuse] This is good news: "A federal judge on Monday struck down an Idaho law that banned documentation of animal abuse at livestock operations, ruling that it violated freedom of speech and other constitutionally guaranteed rights. The measure, approved by the Republican-controlled state legislature and signed into law by Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter in 2014, was crafted in response to a video released by animal-rights activists showing workers at an Idaho dairy [abusing cows]. But U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and other groups that sued to overturn the statute in finding that the so-called ag gag law violated protections of free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution."
[CN: Religious Supremacy; child abuse] I would say this is unbelievable, but of course it's totally, rage-makingly believable: "A lawsuit recently filed against a teacher at Forest Park Elementary School in Indiana alleged that a 7-year-old student was 'banished' from sitting with other students at lunch after he revealed that he did not believe in God. ...The lawsuit is seeking damages and attorneys' fees. In a statement, the school district suggested that the teacher had been wrong to single out the child." Ya think?!
Whaaaaat: "In a world first, the US Food and Drug Administration has given the go-ahead for a 3D-printed pill to be produced. The FDA has previously approved medical devices—including prosthetics—that have been 3D printed. The new drug, dubbed Spritam, was developed by Aprecia Pharmaceuticals to control seizures brought on by epilepsy. The company said that it planned to develop other medications using its 3D platform. Printing the drugs allows layers of medication to be packaged more tightly in precise dosages." Wow.
And finally! "Watch the Best Puppy Sneeze of All Time." I can't even argue. That is definitely the best puppy sneeze of all time!
Daily Dose of Cute
"Someone's at the door! Who could it be?!"
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Primarily Speaking
Are you all SO EXCITED for the FIRST REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE which will happen in a mere TWO DAYS in Cleveland?! And which will feature the TOP TEN of the fully SEVENTEEN candidates, as determined by polls in which Donald Trump is currently leading because of course he is?! If you are SO EXCITED that you can barely contain your OVERFLOWING ENTHUSIASM, please check this box: □
Based on the polling criteria Fox is using to determine which ten bozos can appear at the debate, it looks like the ten likely debators will be: Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, and Rand Paul. Good fucking grief. What a line-up.
Depending on the results of the most recent polling, it looks like Kasich is going to edge out Rick Perry. SO SORRY, RICK PERRY! You really might as well drop out now, dude, seriously, because you've got way more name recognition than Kasich, so that means people are actively not choosing you at this point. Go home. Take a nap.
Anyway.
Here are the quick hits...
[Content Note: Violent rhetoric] New Jersey Governor Chris Christie again demonstrated his fine diplomatic skills over the weekend by calling the national teachers' union "the single most destructive force in public education in America" who deserves to get punched in the face. This fucking guy.
[CN: Classism] Something something Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker something something lots of credit card debt. Okay. I dunno, y'all. This strikes me a lot like the "Scott Walker didn't graduate from college" stuff. And it's coming from his own side of the aisle. Every Republican candidate wants to position themselves as "outside the elite," but then when there is a guy who shares in common some pretty typical things with people genuinely outside the elite, they scoff at him. I see you, Republicans.
Walker is a terrible governor who finds his policies at the bottom of a garbage dump in Indiana, so I don't really care if he's got credit card debt and doesn't have a PhD in Kochology or whatever.
This was just a real thing trending on Twitter last night:
Sure.
On the other side of the aisle, Vice President Joe Biden is reportedly still thinking about running for president. Okay.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Obama Unveils Climate Change Plan
[Content Note: Climate change.]
Yesterday, President Obama unveiled what the New York Times' editorial board calls a "tough, achievable climate plan" and "unquestionably the most important step the administration has taken in the fight against climate change."
It imposes the first nationwide limits on carbon dioxide pollution from power plants, the source of 31 percent of America's total greenhouse gas emissions. It will shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants and give fresh momentum to carbon-free energy sources like wind and solar power, and possibly next-generation nuclear plants. And when taken together with the administration’s other initiatives, chiefly the fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, it reinforces Mr. Obama's credibility and leverage with other nations heading into the United Nations climate change conference in Paris in December.The editors also note that: "Hillary Rodham Clinton has said she supports the plan and will carry it out. Republicans are unanimously opposed." (See also.) Not only are Republican candidates opposed, but: "The plan's opponents in industry, the states and Congress are already gathering their forces to try to undermine it on Capitol Hill and in the courts, claiming that the plan will cost thousands of jobs, drive electricity prices through the roof and irreparably damage the economy. But the truth is this: There is nothing radical about it."
...For more than a decade, carbon emissions from power plants have been declining — a result of a shift in energy generation from coal to cheap and abundant natural gas, regulation of other pollutants, like mercury, which has caused utilities to shut down older plants, and investments in cleaner fuels and energy efficiency.
Coal generation, which 10 years ago provided just over half the nation's electricity, last year provided 39 percent. Meanwhile, renewable energy sources like wind and solar power — driven by federal tax credits, improvements in technology and state mandates — have risen sharply in that time.
The new rules will codify and accelerate these trends, making sure that the shift to cleaner fuels continues quickly.
That makes no difference to opponents, who months after President Obama's 2013 State of the Union address, in which he vowed to act on climate change, began to meet to strategize an opposition strategy:
In the early months of 2014, a group of about 30 corporate lawyers, coal lobbyists and Republican political strategists began meeting regularly in the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, often, according to some of the participants, in a conference room overlooking the White House. Their task was to start devising a legal strategy for dismantling the climate change regulations they feared were coming from President Obama.Meanwhile, in the Senate: "Senate Majority Leader and coal industry advocate Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has vowed to use 'every possible tool at his disposal' to roll back or delay it, arguing the limits on carbon will spell death for the industry in his state and across the country. Already, McConnell and others have launched various campaigns to thwart the Clean Power Plan. The majority leader began telling individual states earlier this year to ignore the plan and refuse to comply with its requirements. He also warned other countries not to trust Obama's promise that the regulations would succeed, a tactic to undermine the president's international climate negotiations."
...By the time Mr. Obama announced the regulations at the White House on Monday, the small group that had begun its work at the Chamber of Commerce had expanded into a vast network of lawyers and lobbyists ranging from state capitols to Capitol Hill, aided by Republican governors and congressional leaders. And their plan was to challenge Mr. Obama at every opportunity and take the fight against what, if enacted, would be one of his signature accomplishments to the Supreme Court.
Within minutes of the announcement, West Virginia's attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, stepped before a bank of cameras for a news conference at the Greenbrier resort in his home state. Flanked by Mike Duncan, the president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, one of the nation's top coal lobbying groups, and Greg Zoeller, the attorney general of Indiana, Mr. Morrisey announced that a group of at least 15 Republican state attorneys general were preparing to jointly file a legal challenge to Mr. Obama's proposal.
I don't even know what to say anymore. The Republican Party does not give a fuck about people. Not our health, not our survival, not anything about our lives at all. The only "people" they care about are corporations, and the only "health" they care about is the financial health of stockholders.
People often talk about—and rightly so—that the Republican Party hates government, but it's even worse than that: They hate human beings. We have zero value to them beyond however we can be exploited for more profits.
I've been accused of being cynical when I say that, but here is proof that Republicans don't even give a fuck about their own children and grandchildren. Even they aren't daft enough to believe that you can buy your way out of a catastrophic global climate crisis. They just don't care about anything but accumulating wealth and enriching the self in the here and now.
The Good News and the Bad News
[Content Note: War on agency. NB: Not only women need access to reproductive healthcare and abortion.]
The Good News: Senate Republicans lost their bid yesterday to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Senate Democrats on Monday blocked a Republican-backed effort to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood following the release of undercover videos that raise questions about the practice of harvesting tissue from aborted fetuses for research.Yes, the Democrats "have portrayed the move to defund Planned Parenthood as an assault on" healthcare because that's exactly what it is. Yeesh.
The 53-46 procedural vote fell short of the 60 ayes needed to proceed with a bill that would immediately stop funding for the beleaguered women's health-care provider.
...Democrats have portrayed the move to defund Planned Parenthood as an assault on women's health. Federal funding for abortion, they note, has been outlawed for decades; the bill under consideration in the Senate would block Medicaid reimbursements and federal family-planning grants that support cancer screenings, birth control counseling and other aspects of reproductive health.
The Bad News: The Democrats managed to eke this one out—with no help from two of their own caucus: Democratic Senators Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia—but it was way closer than it should have been, showing just how endangered abortion rights have truly become, irrespective of the public will, because the Republican Party is intent on its ruination.
Robin Marty:
I know I should be full of joy. Or, if joy is too much of a stretch, maybe at least a smidgen of relief. If I look deep inside, it may even be there. Maybe. After all, President Obama won't be forced to veto the bill, and that's a bright side, especially in an ongoing battle for reproductive health-care access that is seeing fewer victories every day.The Republicans are united against Planned Parenthood. Meanwhile, the Democratic presidential candidates won't even say the word "abortion." We won this one, barely, but I am afraid for our future, y'all. I really am.
Instead, I'm just disheartened. I'm saddened by the loss of support from senators normally considered moderate, especially female senators like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who literally stood on the floor and said that "the best way to reduce the number of abortions in this country is to ensure that women have access to family-planning services they need to protect against unintended pregnancies."
Then she voted to defund the largest provider of family-planning services in the country.
Blog Note
I'm taking the day off today, because I'm feeling under the weather—literally. We had a real house-shaker of a storm here last night, after a super humid day. The swing in bariatric pressure (I guess?) has my sinuses feeling like they're full of rocks and I'm hovering on the precipice of a migraine.
I never used to have any reaction to storms when I was younger. Harrumph. Aging sure is interesting.
Anyway! Although I am always appreciative of well-wishing, there is no need at all to feel obliged; I just wanted to post something informational for the Shakers who tend to worry when I deviate from my routine.
I presume I'll feel better tomorrow, but, if I don't, I'll keep you posted.
Feel free to use this thread to talk about the weather, aging, what makes your sinuses feel terrible, or anything else about which grouchy aging humans (such as myself) complain on the regular.
Open Thread
Hosted by umbrellas.
[The pictured painting is "Rain in the City" by Stanislav Sidorov.]
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
