Suggested by Shaker Marldegeebeegeep: "What is a phrase you use a lot when talking to yourself, but rarely or never when talking to other people?"
Anything critical ("That was a stupid thing to do") or instructive ("Settle the fuck down"), lol.
[Got a good suggestion for a Question of the Day? Drop it in comments here!]
Question of the Day
She's Ready and So Am I
Y'ALL. Hillary Clinton just gave an AMAZING foreign policy address, in which she basically ripped Donald Trump to shreds and showed the world why she is A+ presidential material. HOLY SHIT IT WAS GREAT.
For anyone who missed it, here's my Executive Summary:
If you'd like to watch it—which I highly recommend!—here's the video (and if that gets taken down, it's available at C-SPAN):
TIME has a complete transcript.
And, naturally, I had a few things to say about it over at BNR:
She is ready. Every word of her speech conveyed her readiness. She sounded smart, she sounded strong, and she sounded like she was having fun. She was in her zone.Head on over to read the rest.
Because she knows how to fight. She wouldn't be where she is now if she didn't know how to fight bigots and bullies. Trust that.
She didn't get where she is—the first woman to stand on the precipice of the US presidency—by accident or luck. She made her way to the podium, today, following a long journey littered with barriers and brawls that would leave most mere mortals in a crumpled heap.
Hillary has been obliged, often unfairly, to be extraordinary. And so she is.
Woo. Flames. Woo.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Shooting; death; self-harm] Yesterday at UCLA, a student shot and killed his former professor before killing himself. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the extent of his violence: "Police said Thursday that the gunman...had a 'kill list' with other names, including that of a woman who was found dead in Minnesota. The gunman—Mainak Sarkar, 38—apparently had a grudge against the professor, which prompted him to drive to California from his home in Minnesota with two handguns and extra ammunition, said Charlie Beck, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department." The professor who was killed, William Klug, 39, who was a professor in UCLA's engineering department, was also named on that list, according to Charlie Beck, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Beck also said "that the shooting appeared to be 'tied to a dispute over intellectual property.' Sarkar apparently felt that Klug had released some kind of information that harmed him, Beck said. But Beck added that school officials called this 'absolutely not true and this is the workings of his imagination.'" Already, the disablist narratives that Sarkar was "deranged" have begun. But this seems to be a pretty classic case of an aggrieved, entitled man who uses a gun to get vengeance against people he believes have crossed him.
[CN: Toxic water] Damn: "At least 33 cities across 17 US states have used water testing 'cheats' that potentially conceal dangerous levels of lead, a Guardian investigation launched in the wake of the toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan, has found. Of these cities, 21 used the same water testing methods that prompted criminal charges against three government employees in Flint over their role in one of the worst public health disasters in US history. ...The Guardian's investigation demonstrates that similar testing regimes were in place in cities including Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee." Unsurprising, but still infuriating.
[CN: Transphobia] "During a PBS town hall, President Obama made a strong show of support for transgender rights and debunked the idea that he is forcing the issue onto the country. President Obama was asked by a person in the town hall in Elkhart, Indiana, 'With all the pressing issues that you have before you right now, why is the issue of which bathroom a person uses such an issue?' President Obama responded: 'Somehow people think I made it an issue; I didn't make it an issue. What happened and what continues to happen is you have transgender kids in schools. And they get bullied. And they get ostracized. And it's tough for them.'" Damn right. It wouldn't be an issue if there weren't bigoted bullies. After all, trans people having been peeing in public for a long time.
[CN: Police brutality; death; racism] "Back in March, the Hennepin County attorney declined to indict the two Minneapolis Police Department officers who were involved in the shooting death of Jamar Clark. Today (June 1), the federal government also opted not to charge Officers Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze for killing the unarmed Black man. According to the Associated Press, Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger decided not to file criminal civil rights charges against the officers, citing insufficient evidence to prove that they employed excessive force to intentionally violate Clark's rights." By way of reminder: Witnesses reported that Clark was handcuffed when he was shot, but Luger says the evidence (?) shows otherwise.
You know we've reached the nadir of media coverage when CNN actually fact-checking Donald Trump is newsworthy.
[CN: Domestic violence; video may autoplay at link] If these texts between Amber Heard and Johnny Depp's personal assistant are indeed real, everyone who rushed to defend Depp is going to feel like a fucking asshole. Or would, if they had any integrity or shame in the first place.
[CN: Addiction] "Tests show that Prince died of an opioid overdose, a law-enforcement official told the Associated Press on Thursday. ...The official, who is close to the investigation, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The findings confirm suspicions that opioids played a role in the musician's death. After he died, authorities began reviewing whether an overdose was to blame and whether he had been prescribed drugs in the preceding weeks." I'm sharing this because it will be all over the news, but it doesn't really matter. Or shouldn't. He died of a disease that is very difficult to treat.
Oh dear: "Paris' Louvre museum halted entries on Thursday and will be closed to the public on Friday to allow priceless artworks to be removed if the swollen river Seine keeps rising, according to an internal email to staff. 'The museum will remain closed to the public tomorrow out of precaution: there is no danger to the public or our staff but will allow us to calmly remove certain art collections should it be necessary,' the email, seen by Reuters, stated. After days of torrential rains, the French government has issued an orange alert for central Paris, with the Seine's water level bursting through five metres." I'm not familiar with that area of Paris, so I don't know how residential it is. I hope everyone who has businesses and/or homes in that area will be okay, too.
Whoa! "Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the universe is expanding 5 percent to 9 percent faster than expected. 'This surprising finding may be an important clue to understanding those mysterious parts of the universe that make up 95 percent of everything and don't emit light, such as dark energy, dark matter, and dark radiation,' said study leader and Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and The Johns Hopkins University, both in Baltimore, Maryland. The results will appear in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal."
And finally! Oh just a GIANT alligator strolling along on a golf course. LOL yikes!
The High Cost of the Old Boy's Club: Navy Scandal Edition
[Content note: rape, sexual assault, sex work, homophobia. The linked survivor’s stories contain specific descriptions of rapes.]
Last week, Craig Whitlock at the Washington Post offered a devastating look at one of the biggest corruption scandals in United States military history. It surrounds Leonard Glenn Francis, a defense contractor who bribed Naval personnel and defrauded the United States out of millions of dollars, for years on end:
In perhaps the worst national-security breach of its kind to hit the Navy since the end of the Cold War, Francis doled out sex and money to a shocking number of people in uniform who fed him classified material about U.S. warship and submarine movements. Some also leaked him confidential contracting information and even files about active law enforcement investigations into his company.He exploited the intelligence for illicit profit, brazenly ordering his moles to redirect aircraft carriers to ports he controlled in Southeast Asia so he could more easily bilk the Navy for fuel, tugboats, barges, food, water and sewage removal.
…Francis and his firm have admitted to defrauding the Navy of $35 million, though investigators believe the real amount could be much greater.
Francis and two of the contractors who worked for him have pleaded guilty to federal crimes, as have four Navy officers, one enlisted man, and a NCIS agent. More were charged last week and many more—at least 200, including 30 admirals—remain under investigation. Using classified infomration obtained via a stunning array of bribes, Francis’s Singapore-based company, Glenn Defense Marine, won contracts for which it wildly overcharged. This not only cost taxpayers millions, it posed a grave threat to Navy security. At the January trial of the first sailor convicted of wrongdoing in the case, the prosecution laid out the potential damage:
“He put the U.S. Navy at risk of embarrassment, exploitation, attack, or worse; and in doing so he made a fool of every senior sailor who had promoted him to a position of responsibility,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark W. Pletcher wrote in a court brief in advance of Layug’s sentencing.
…“As seems abundantly obvious, in the wrong hands, this information would provide a substantial advantage to those intent on doing our Sailors, our Navy, and our Nation harm, essentially allowing them to know when and where to plan an attack,” wrote Pletcher, the federal prosecutor overseeing the case.
Those who attempted to blow the whistle didn’t get very far. From last week's story:
Francis threw a Christmas party for the visiting officers at the Island Shangri-La, a five-star hotel. They were treated to filet mignon, lobster and Dom Pérignon champagne, and they mingled with female escorts dressed as Santa’s little helpers, according to Schaus and a second officer who was present in port.A handful of senior officers were invited to an after-party with the escorts, whom Francis had dubbed the “Santa Niñas,” or Santa’s girls, according to a third individual who was present.
The next day, Francis boarded one of the warships and delivered a $600,000 sewage bill, according to the second officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he remains on active duty and wasn’t authorized to speak to a reporter.
“He came into my office with a big grin wanting to be paid,” the officer said. The officer protested and brought up the lavish party from the night before. “I came right out and told Francis that we were paying for it with this bill.”
The officer said he lost the argument, and Francis got what he wanted.
One of the points that Whitlock’s terrific reporting uncovers is how many of the bribes used by Francis involved sex work. Although he used a variety of other bribes, ranging from iPhones and theatre tickets to straight up cash payments, the extent to which he used sex to get secrets is stunning. He kept extensive notes on the sexual preferences of various officers and maintained extensive contacts with escort agencies in several countries in order to be able to offer sexual services to Naval men in many different Asian ports. In Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Singapore, and other places, luxury hotels and the services of sex workers were some of his most important tools. In some cases, sex workers not only provided services, but also gathered additional information for Francis.
It’s not exactly news that sailors like sex. But there's a context here that is important. While winking at the (often married) heterosexual men receiving sexual favors courtesy a defense contractor, the Navy was also busily discharging sailors who happened to be gay, lesbian or bisexual. The cost of discharging military personnel from all services in the first ten years of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has been estimated between $190.5 million to $363.5 million. By 2010, more than 13,000 individuals had been discharged under DADT, and increasingly, they were disproportionately women of all races and men of color The US Navy alone, for the years 1997-2005 (the only years for which I could find data broken down by service) discharged 2,483 personnel for DADT.
Another piece of context for this is the piss-poor job the Navy and other branches of the service were doing dealing with rape and sexual assault. In 2013, the year that investigators finally closed in on Leonard Francis’ corruption ring, there were 1,057 incidents of sexual assault reported in the Navy alone. Women in the Marines and the Navy were at highest risk for sexual assault, when compared to the other services. And a 2013 Rand survey found that a whopping 62 percent of military women who reported sexual assault received some form of retaliation.
The stories of retaliation against women reporting are appalling, particularly the technique of diagnosing survivors with mental illness and then booting them, not their attackers, from the service. Amy Quinn, dismissed from the Navy for having a “personality disorder” after reporting her rape. Jenny McLendon, who received the same diagnosis after reporting. Samantha Jarrett, diagnosed with depression and medically discharged. “Carrie Ann,” another woman with a depressingly familiar story:
The day after her release from the hospital, Carrie Anne returned to duty, but she had missed the morning muster. A petty officer first class confronted her about that.“I told him I had just gotten out of the hospital and had been raped,” Carrie Anne said. 'He yelled at me for using the word 'rape.'” What female members of the Navy were supposed to say was they were involved in a SAPR case.” SAPR stands for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response.
Shortly after this reprimand, Carrie Anne said she was called into the office of the Chief Petty Officer in charge of her division. She had requested a change of location in her residence because her attacker lived nearby.
“He said he wasn't going to put an innocent man behind bars,” Carrie Anne said. “He said he didn't want 'stagnant water in his Navy.'”
”Carrie Anne” was medically discharged against her will. All charges were dropped against her attacker.
My point, here it is:
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the same culture that persecutes rape survivors rather than rapists was willing to wink at heterosexual men receiving sexual bribes from a defense contractor. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that a military culture paranoid about rooting out the private lives of gay service members simply ignored the actual threat to security posed by the sailors receiving bribes from Leonard. Heterosexual adultery can be grounds for charges under the UCMJ if the behavior “was to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces or was of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.” While I’m actually not too thrilled at the idea of the military rooting around in people’s private lives, it does seem to me that letting a defense contractor hire sex workers for an officer is about as prejudicial to good order as it gets. Yet adultery is more often used as a lesser charge to help rapists escape appropriate punishment, or as a threat against survivors who try to report rape.
The connecting thread here is a culture of straight male entitlement: entitlement to sex, to bribes, even to a job in the face of crimes against other sailors. It’s a poisonous stew that is actively harmful to good discipline and yes, to military safety and security. All those years of rooting out queer sailors, all those years of dismissing women who reported their rapes, helped keep the Navy a Straight Old Boy’s Club. But queer folk and rape survivors weren't the problem. The Boy's Club was the problem. If the Leonard Francis scandal doesn't prompt more people to give a damn about changing the Navy's culture, then I don't know what will.
Fat Fashion
This is your semi-regular thread in which fat women can share pix, make recommendations for clothes they love, ask questions of other fat women about where to locate certain plus-size items, share info about sales, talk about what jeans cut at what retailer best fits their body shapes, discuss how to accessorize neutral colored suits, share stories of going bare-armed for the first time, brag about a cool fashion moment, whatever.
* * *
One of my favorite t-shirts, care of TeeFury. (With which, to be clear, I have no affiliation; I'm just a fan!) Unfortunately, not all of their tees come in plus sizes, and their plus size range is pretty limited. But sometimes I get lucky.
Anyway! As always, all subjects related to fat fashion are on topic, but if you want a topic for discussion: What shops do you love but often get frustrated by their inconsistent and/or limited size range?
Have at it in comments! Please remember to make fat women of all sizes, especially women who find themselves regularly sizing out of standard plus-size lines, welcome in this conversation, and pass no judgment on fat women who want to and/or feel obliged, for any reason, to conform to beauty standards. And please make sure if you're soliciting advice, you make it clear you're seeking suggestions—and please be considerate not to offer unsolicited advice. Sometimes people just need to complain and want solidarity, not solutions.
Trump Tries to Bully the President
"This is a president who doesn't have a clue," Trump told supporters in Sacramento. "If he campaigns, that means I'm allowed to hit him, just like I hit Bill Clinton."I'm sure the President is positively quivering with fear.
Trump's remarks followed an appearance by Obama in Elkhart, Ind., on Wednesday, where the president warned against the Republican Party's economic policies and said the GOP was misleading Americans on the condition of the economy.
Rallying supporters at a hangar at Sacramento International Jet Center, Trump said foreign leaders view Obama as a "total lightweight," and he said Obama should not involve himself in the campaign.
"He shouldn't campaign," Trump said. "He should go out and do the job that he's supposed to be doing."
And I'm sure he's definitely going to take advice from a dude who thinks that dick size and steaks are relevant issues for discussion during a presidential campaign.
Anyway.
Obama says (very diplomatically) that the Democratic primary is almost over, and I can't wait to see my two favorite progressive powerhouses stump against Trump.
So the President Gave a Speech Yesterday...
AND IT WAS REALLY GREAT!
[The full transcript is available here.]
There are a lot of things I loved about this speech, a lot, and I really encourage you to watch it and/or read the transcript when you can.
But I'm just going to highlight this one bit, because it's something I've never heard a president say before:
So, look, here's my main point: The primary story that Republicans have been telling about the economy is not supported by the facts. It's just not. They repeat it a lot -- (laughter) -- but it's not supported by the facts. But they say it anyway. Now, why is that? It's because it has worked to get them votes, at least at the congressional level.I have never, ever, heard a United States president call out the scapegoating of feminists by Republicans. Even though it has been happening for decades.
Because -- and here, look, I'm just being blunt with you -- by telling hardworking, middle-class families that the reason they're getting squeezed is because of some moochers at the bottom of the income ladder, because of minorities, or because of immigrants, or because of public employees, or because of feminists -- (laughter) -- because of poor folks who aren't willing to work, they've been able to promote policies that protect powerful special interests and those who are at the very top of the economic pyramid. That's just the truth. (Applause.)
I hope you don't mind me being blunt about this, but I've been listening to this stuff for a while now. (Laughter.) And I'm concerned when I watch the direction of our politics. I mean, we have been hearing this story for decades. Tales about welfare queens, talking about takers, talking about the "47 percent." It's the story that is broadcast every day on some cable news stations, on right-wing radio, it's pumped into cars, and bars, and VFW halls all across America, and right here in Elkhart.
And if you're hearing that story all the time, you start believing it.
I am so grateful to President Obama for saying that plainly.
And I am so grateful to Hillary Clinton, because I'm pretty sure that her visibility and persistence, despite all that it costs her, has a lot to do with why it's this particular president, her friend, who was the one who said it first.
And I am also grateful to First Lady Michelle Obama, who I suspect deserves some credit, too. *wink*
Hillary + Girls
Yesterday in comments, Shaker Eccaba said: "I am so looking forward to pictures of little girls with President Clinton!" ME TOO! But, in the meantime, how about a few pictures of little girls with candidate Clinton? Yay!
[All photos from Hillary for America.]
Question of the Day
It's that time again: What would you like to see asked as a future Question of the Day? Either something that's never been asked, or something that I haven't asked for awhile and you really enjoyed the first time around.
BRING ALL YOUR QUESTIONS! ALL OF THEM! :)
Hahahahahaha
Let's all have a look at this interactive graphic which tells us what the most commonly misspelled word in every state is! Because it is very interesting and also sometimes funny!
YOU WIN MASSACHUSETTS. You win.
[H/T to Eastsidekate.]
Whoa
Gallup polled 60 diff voting/demographic groups re: Clinton/Trump favorable. Clinton +favorables in 46 groups, Trump + favorables in 14.
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) June 1, 2016
This is incredible: Not only did Hillary Clinton have higher favorables in way more demographic categories, but Donald Trump doesn't break 50% favorability in a single one of Gallup's dozens of demographic categories. NOT ONE.
The closest he came in any of their dozens of demos was 49%.
Clinton was 50+ in 14 categories.
Now, there's a ton of overlap in these numerous categories, but still. It's notable that he didn't break 50% in a single one of them.
That makes it pretty damn hard to win an election.
I Didn't Know This, But I'm Not Surprised
[Content Note: Homophobia.]
Lieutenant Governor of California Gavin Newsom published this on his Facebook page today:
In 2004, after I ordered the city clerk to give same-sex couples marriage licenses, I quickly became a pariah in the Democratic Party. I was accused of endangering Sen. Kerry's campaign for president, my speech at the national convention was cancelled, and most hurtful, major democratic candidates and elected officials — some of whom were my friends — refused to be photographed with me or even be in the same room with me. I was being demonized by the left and the right. Only one major figure in the Dem party was willing to be photographed with me: Hillary Clinton. In 2004, we did an event together down at Delancey Street in San Francisco. I'll never forget that moment — that when I was being attacked for my position on same sex marriage and what we did in San Francisco, she was willing to stand with me in public when no one else was. #ImWithHerBlub.
Also a remarkable reminder of how far the Democratic Party has come in 12 years. I mean. A profound success, credit to the LGBTQIA community for relentless advocacy and always expecting more.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Airline disaster] "Signals have been detected from one of the black boxes of the EgyptAir plane that crashed last month, French investigators have confirmed. They were picked up by the French vessel Laplace as it was searching the Mediterranean Sea. ...'The signal from a beacon from a flight recorder has been detected,' said Remi Jouty of France's Bureau of Investigations and Analysis. A priority search area has been established, he added. Laplace is using acoustic detection systems to listen to the locator 'pings' given off by the black boxes underwater. A specialist vessel carrying robots able to dive to 3,000 metres (3,280 yards) is due to arrive next week to help retrieve the devices." Fingers crossed that this will help provide much-desired answers for the family and friends of those lost.
[CN: War on agency] Restricting access to abortion doesn't stop abortion. It just forces pregnant people to turn to other methods of ending their pregnancies. "Five years into a wave of anti-abortion legislation that is without historical precedent, Johnston is not surprised. In fact, she is part of a rising chorus of abortion providers and activists who wonder if they are witnessing, as a direct result of those laws, a spike in women who are attempting to take matters into their own hands. ...Until recently, abortion rights activists treated stories like these as harbingers of the future if states continued to erode abortion rights. Thirty-eight states have passed more than 300 new abortion restrictions since 2010, laws that have shuttered dozens of abortion clinics across the south, west and midwest. But a growing number now reject the idea that these anecdotes represent the worst-case scenarios. And a small body of research has emerged to support them. Among the most eye-catching is a report, released in November, projecting that anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 women of childbearing age in Texas—the site of the nation's most bruising abortion fight—have at some point attempted to induce their own abortions." Fucking hell.
In good news: "An influential body of rabbis passed a resolution last week calling for synagogues to be 'explicitly welcoming' to transgender people. As the country debates which bathrooms transgender people can use, the rabbis of Conservative Judaism officially declared their support of transgender rights. ...The Rabbinical Assembly called on synagogues, camps, schools, and other institutions affiliated with the Conservative movement to make sure their facilities meet the needs of transgender people and to use the names and pronouns that people prefer. It also encouraged Conservative institutions to advocate for national and local policies on behalf of transgender people. 'That is always the first job of the religious community, the faith community: to bring our Jewish values to bear on our real-life situations and the real people around us,' said Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, the executive vice president of the organization of 1,700 rabbis."
Relatedly: "Should it reach his desk, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, says he'll sign the House version of a transgender rights bill which has been stalled in the legislature for several months. ...'The bill approved by the Senate and the version that is set to be passed by the House on Wednesday would allow people to use the restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity and would protect transgender people from discrimination in barber shops, malls, libraries, restaurants, and other public accommodations.'"
In more (qualified) good news: "US survey shows dramatic rise in acceptance of same-sex relationships: US public acceptance of sexual activity between two adults of the same sex has nearly quadrupled since 1990. According to a national survey of more than 30,000 Americans, those who view sexual activity between two adults of the same sex as being 'not wrong at all' increased from 13% in 1990 to 49% in 2014. The shift was even greater for adults under the age of 30, with the proportion rising from 15% to 63% during the same time period." The qualification, of course, is that it's still not 100%. But quadrupled acceptance is still pretty terrific!
[CN: Police brutality; racism; death] "Just over a month after a jury found him guilty of killing Eric Harris, an unarmed Black man, former Tulsa County Reserve Sheriff's Deputy Robert Bates has been sentenced to four years in prison. Tulsa World reports that yesterday (May 31), District Judge William Musseman concluded a four-hour hearing by following the jury's sentencing recommendation of four years for the second-degree manslaughter conviction. It is the maximum punishment allowed for the charge." But real justice will not come until no more Black people are murdered by police.
[CN: Racism; class warfare; homelessness] "While the path from kindergarten through college can be tough for anyone, two government reports released this month outline the particular difficulties facing poor black and Hispanic students, as well as the higher education hurdles confronting homeless and foster youth. One Government Accountability Office (GAO) study shows increasing isolation of poor students of color in K-12 education. And, their schools have fewer resources. Another GAO report says homeless and foster youth graduate from college at a sharply lower rate than other students. The two groups also have a difficult time navigating bureaucratic rules that make it harder for them to secure financial aid for college." Only in a nation of bootstraps fairytales could we even imagine that it could be any other way.
[CN: Rape culture] Baylor University chancellor Ken Starr is reportedly resigning "as a matter of conscience." Oh. I guess that means he feels pretty guilty that he got busted not giving a shit about football players raping people.
Hillary Clinton is going after Donald Trump as a con man. That is a pretty good and also very accurate strategy!
Good grief: "Donald Trump Actually Does Not Know What Brexit Is." Of course he doesn't.
Neat! "Close-up imagery of Pluto's surface has scientists wondering how the dwarf planet's terrain came to be. The photos, which show expansive mountain ranges and valleys, were taken by the New Horizons probe in July 2015 and were released by NASA this week. 'We traveled 3,000 miles and found something a lot like the Earth,' says Alan Stern, New Horizons' principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. 'It was a big surprise.'" (What Stern means is that they traveled 3,000 miles around Pluto, I believe, since Pluto is 4.67 billion miles from Earth, lol.)
And finally! A compilation of joyous cats greeting their humans after long separations. Because dogs shouldn't get all the attention for loving their people!
Quote of the Day
"LGBT individuals deserve to know their country stands beside them. ...NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2016 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people."—President Barack Obama, in his Presidential Proclamation on LGBT Pride Month, 2016.
Happy Pride Month!
This Is So Tiring
Yesterday while campaigning in California, Sanders said it will be "factually incorrect" that Clinton will clinch the Dem nomination on June 7 because she won't have a majority of "real delegates," per the Washington Post's Dave Weigel. But as the New York Times' Nate Cohn points out, "Sanders needs superdelegates to exist to have a chance of vetoing voters, but he also needs their preferences not to count to survive."Hillary Clinton currently leads by 270 pledged delegates and 770 overall delegates. She is also leading by more than 3 million votes. By any metric, she is winning.
Bottom line: Sanders is moving the goal posts here. In 2008, Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination through a combination of pledged delegates and superdelegates. After all, a majority of ALL delegates is 2,383 (out of 4,765), while a majority of pledged delegates is 2,026 (out of 4,051).
To reach the magic number of 2,383 delegates, via a combination of pledged delegates and superdelegates, Clinton only needs to win 8% of the remaining delegates. Sanders, however, needs to wing 92% of the remaining delegates.
So he's making an absurd argument about how superdelegates don't count blah blah.
But even according to Bernie's New Rules, by which Clinton must get a majority in pledged delegates, she still only needs to win 33% of the remaining pledged delegates. He would have to win 67% of the remaining pledged delegates. That is not going to happen.
No matter which way you slice it, he's losing. And not because it's "rigged." But because he just isn't the most popular of the Democratic candidates.
I don't know how many more times I will need to say this, but: There is no conspiracy. It is simply the oldest story in politics. Someone wins, and someone loses. The end.
