I’m trying to take advantage of the last relatively temperate day, before the new heat wave begins in earnest. I got up early and cooked a 3-day spaghetti with hot Italian sausage dinner. Then I made a big breakfast of fried eggs and potatoes. Because my friend with cancer is taking a rare trip to the prison tomorrow, I get to take a volunteer day with a small group of my guys for a CoDA meeting. Then on Friday, I have to go out into the extreme heat for the routine quarterly surgery on my foot, so please expect me to be somewhat scarce for the rest of the week.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:06 (average 5:20). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Fantasy Football Tips:
Our season opens on Thursday, September 10, but there’s a lot to do between now and then. Get to know your players. Check for Bye week conflicts. Keep track of injuries. Follow your players’ progress during preseasons. Use Add/Drop to make needed changes from unclaimed players or propose trades with competitors. If you have any questions ask.
Short Takes:
From Daily Kos (classic 6/2014): America’s gun death rates — both nationwide and in the states — dwarf those of most other Western industrialized nations. The gun death rate in the United Kingdom in 2011 was 0.23 per 100,000 while in Australia it was 0.86 per 100,000.
States with the Five Highest Gun Death Rates
(Rank State Household Gun Ownership Gun Death Rate Per 100,000)
1 Louisiana 45.6 percent 18.91
2 Mississippi 54.3 percent 17.80
3 Alaska 60.6 percent 17.41
4 Wyoming 62.8 percent 16.92
5 Montana 61.4 percent 16.74
States with the Five Lowest Gun Death Rates
(Rank State Household Gun Ownership Gun Death Rate Per 100,000)
50 Rhode Island 13.3 percent 3.14
49 Hawaii 9.7 percent 3.56
48 Massachusetts 12.8 percent 3.84
47 New York 18.1 percent 5.11
46 New Jersey 11.3 percent 5.46
For a list of gun death rates in all 50 states, Visit Here.
This is what I’d expect except for one thing. NJ hadn’t caught up to PIGnocchio’s policies yet.
From The New Yorker: The Republican National Committee has released the format for its first 2016 Presidential debate, to be broadcast by Fox News on August 6th:
1. Question from moderator to Donald Trump;
2. Ignoring of question by Donald Trump, followed by personal attack on Jeb Bush;
3. Feeble attempt at rebuttal by Jeb Bush;
4. Interruption by Donald Trump, followed by attack on other eight candidates on stage;
Andy has it pegged. Click through for the rest.
From NY Times: Rick Perry’s voice softens when he talks about the joy he gets from looking at his iPad and seeing “that 20-week picture of my first grandbaby.” Marco Rubio says ultrasounds of his sons and daughters reinforced how “they were children — and they were our children.” Rand Paul recalls watching fetuses suck their thumbs. And Chris Christie says the ultrasound of his first daughter changed his views on abortion.
If they seem to be reading from the same script, they are.
With help from a well-funded, well-researched and invigorated anti-abortion movement, Republican politicians have refined how they are talking about pregnancy and abortion rights, choosing their words in a way they hope puts Democrats on the defensive.
The goal, social conservatives say, is to shift the debate away from the “war on women” paradigm that has proved so harmful to their party’s image.
The Republican war on women has changed little, as barefoot and pregnant is still the objective. They are just using an even less honest tactic.
Cartoon:
Apologies to the snake.
27 Responses to “Open Thread–7/27/2015”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
4:06 (average 5:20) Yellow hooks? I thought they were just rusty.
DKos. Yeah. Saw that. At that time Colorado was right at the middle, #25, but the rate was a little higher than average due to states not having equal populations. Nothing to be proud of.
New Yoker – ROTFL. I can't click through today, too close to the end of the month. I'll bet it's worth coming back to Saturday,, though.
NY Times – This pisses me off. You notice no one has asked their wives/daughters in law how THEY felt about getting an ultrasound. My impression is that even women who wanted it hated it. Is anyone asking the men how they feel about the Silver Stallion? No? Pity.
Cartoon – Well, now, THAT is the stuff of nightmares. Don't be surprised if we are all short of sleep tomorrow.
I suspect you're alluding to "The New Yorker" paywall WRT end of the month. (I susbscribe, so if 'The New Yorker" has limits to free visits per month like the NY Times does, I don't notice it.) If so you may find this link useful as a workaround for it and other big sites that have paywalls – it works for me WRT "The NY Times":
http://observer.com/2015/01/heres-how-to-get-around-the-paywalls-of-the-new-york-times-wall-street-journal-and-more/
Yes, I am, and thank you, that should help. 🙂
So OK, here's my customary PS, with Care2 article that links with another article that links to a petition:
http://www.care2.com/news/member/739002257/3897527
Why this is so personal is that Securus, one of the crookedest prison service providers, is threatening to buy JPay, one of the relatively good ones, and one on which I rely. The thrust of the petition is to ask the FCC to keep phone rates down for prison phones, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to complain about the proposed JPay buyout too.
already signed my friend
Thanks, I signed the petition.
Signed – thanks Joanne.
And I know my comments are disorganized today, but this is just too good not to share:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/13/1401176/-Cartoon-Sparky-s-inferno?detail=email
Tom Tomottow has outdone himself.
Shared this one on Facebook. Loved it.
Yes, that cartoon will give anybody nightmares…. just wondering which GOP candidate it looks most like…
Oh, gee, do you think it's the right time to talk about guns? I mean, with all the shootings and all, maybe we should just wait awhile – (until we're ALL dead from gunshots??) Some of those numbers surprise me actually – the end result is the same tho – too darn many.
Andy is once again probably more right than we want him to be.
NYTimes – gag a maggot… all the warm and fuzzy Republican concern for family …rrrright. That fools everybody. Especially the families trying hard to make it without any help. They know how much the Republicans care.
Take care in the heat, TC – your yummy foods sound great. Wishing for you, some cooling rain.
3:16 I got hooked on the hooks.
3:11 Oh, these chains that bind me!
Daily Kos ~ There has been a mass shooting every day of this year so far. http://www.businessinsider.com/you-dont-hear-about-most-mass-shootings-2015-7
New Yorker ~ This was hilarious. Good one, Andy!
NY Times ~ Just don't go to them if you need help after the baby is born. Only unborn fetuses matter.
Cartoon ~ YIKES!
I saw that, too, Patty–a truly horrifying statistic
Since this relates to a specific type of killing that often is a shooting, I share this email I just received:
"As TIME magazine reported on Friday, Democracy for America is making some big, important changes to our endorsement process. In a piece highlighting DFA's decision to evaluate how candidates — local, state, and federal — are addressing structural racism, TIME reporter Sam Frizell wrote:
Because we're a family here at DFA, I want to take a moment to explain these changes, to hear your thoughts, and hopefully to start a real, perhaps challenging conversation within our community about how the progressive movement should address structural racism.
At Netroots Nation this year, a team of black women affiliated with the Movement for Black Lives conducted an incredibly effective direct action during the Presidential Town Hall with Gov. Martin O'Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders. The organizers called on both candidates to directly acknowledge the black women who have died in the custody of the police — including Sandra Bland, who was found dead in a jail cell in Texas just days earlier. And they asked them to specifically lay out what they would do in office to disrupt and dismantle structural racism in our criminal justice system and beyond.
Both candidates disappointed the #BlackLivesMatter organizers with their answers. They disappointed me as well.
I want to be very clear here: I have respect for all our presidential candidates and plan to fight hard alongside all of them — and you — to advance a progressive platform this year and in the years to come. That said, I want to explain why I believe their answers were inadequate, and how important I think it is for us as a movement to start pushing ourselves — and candidates for all offices — for better answers when it comes to racial justice.
When Gov. O'Malley was pushed to acknowledge that black lives matter, he repeated a series of phrases several times: "Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter." He subsequently apologized, admitting that he "did not understand the tremendous passion, commitment and depth of feeling that all of us should be attaching to this issue." However, when Jeb Bush was asked about the incident at Netroots Nation, Bush doubled down on "all lives matter" and said O'Malley should not have apologized.
With Jeb Bush and Republicans piling on, it's important that we set the record straight about "all lives matter" so Democrats across the country understand why it's an inappropriate response to the Movement for Black Lives. When people like Bush insist on saying "all lives matter" — in the context of a discussion about racism in the criminal justice system — they are willfully refusing to acknowledge that our society doesn't actually treat all lives like they have equal value.
No one — absolutely no one — questions the value of the lives of white people in our society. When white people are killed, the media pays attention. The criminal justice system takes action. The public demands answers. The same simply isn't true when it comes to black lives. It hasn't been true historically, and it isn't true now. When black people die at the hands of the police, for example, our society makes excuses for the officers, character assassinates the victims, or just looks the other way far, far too often.
That's why Jeb Bush's "all lives matter" stance is exactly the kind of "color blindness" that allows structural racism to continue to fester unopposed. And if we are going to live up to our progressive core values of equality and fairness, it's up to us to stop hiding behind "color blindness" and address racial inequalities head on. That is precisely the problem the Movement for Black Lives is working to address.
We also need to stop assuming that economic justice alone will miraculously lead to racial justice. The reality is that racial inequalities are foundational to economic inequalities — and that income inequality can not be solved without dismantling structural, systemic racism and the rampant discrimination that flows from it.
Even in a world in which income inequality did not exist, structural, systemic racism would still take black and brown lives. When police officers profile and pull over black people, it doesn't matter to those officers where those individuals went to college or how much money they make. It only matters that they are black. That prejudice is real and pervasive, and we will never be able to really fix our economic problems without ending it and the long list of disadvantages that spring from it.
That's why the big challenge facing our movement — and the candidates who seek to lead us — is in fighting oppressive power wherever it exists, from the Wall Street banks that are rigging our economy and destroying lives to a criminal justice system that is brutalizing black and brown people.
While Democracy for America and many other progressive organizations with largely white memberships haven’t been silent in fighting against racial injustice, there’s no doubt we must do more. Real solidarity means not just speaking out against racial injustice, but doing everything we can to connect the fight against structural racism to every aspect of the work we do.
After hearing the calls of our friends in the #BlackLivesMatter movement, that’s exactly what we intend to do. Here is what Democracy for America is committing to as an organization with a mission to elect more and better Democrats across the country:
We will ask every single candidate who asks for our support what they have done, and what they will do to stand up alongside the Movement for Black Lives while confronting structural racism within our country's culture of white supremacy. As TIME magazine reported, this will apply to candidates running up and down the ballot — from local and state level candidates to the 2016 Democratic presidential contenders.
DFA will be working with campaigns to communicate with voters more often and more effectively about race by actively helping campaigns poll on racial justice issues and amplify messaging that takes on structural racism.
DFA will work to change the kind of candidates that run for office and win. We need elected leadership that reflects the full array of talent and lived experiences that America has to offer — that's why we intend to work even harder to recruit and support progressive people of color to run for office and win in 2016 and beyond.
This is just the beginning of our process — now we want to hear more about what you think. Click here to tell us what the progressive movement should do to proactively address racial justice, what you think about Democracy for America's decision to integrate a racial justice lens into our candidate endorsement process, and any new ideas you think we should also consider.
This won't be easy — and it will take a long time. But, working together, we can support the Movement for Black Lives, change the Democratic Party, push back on Republicans like Jeb Bush, win elections, and put an end to income inequality and racial injustice.
Thank you for letting us know what you think.
– Charles
Charles Chamberlain, Executive Director
Democracy for America"
3:08 I'll let you have this one Puddy Tat! I am not anemic so the extra iron is not needed.
Thanks, TC, Lynn, Pat, and Joanne for your prayers. My cousin Phillip is still in critical condition. They have decided to keep him in an induced coma until Friday, plan to sew up his chest on Thursday. They are telling his wife that they believe the reactions he has had were caused by Celebrex, which he has been taking for two years. His biggest concern when he went in for surgery was how long would it be before he could play golf again. We are so worried.
TC, we will miss you, but know you need to take care of your guys. I hope you make it through the horrid heat ok. My AC went out again today, so I called a different contractor who will be here tomorrow. That seems trivial right now, but I really hope the results are better than the last one was.
Daily Kos: Kentucky ranked 15th, I suppose this is because we don't have dense population in most of the state, I fear it would be higher if we did. Most of the people I know who love guns are hunters and don't use them to kill people. I wish hunting would end, too.
The New Yorker: Andy probably has it right. The Donald will talk over anyone. I am not a fan of JOe in the MOrning, but Trump did a number on Joe this week. Who knew that was possible?
NY Times: The only time these politicians care about children is when they are in the womb. After they are born they don't need to eat, have a safe place to live, or be educated. The recently released video that attacks Planned Parenthood was heavily edited to show what they did. Never mind that 90 percent of Planned parent hood funds pay for cancer screening and birthcontrol.
Cartoon: That sums up my feelings for any help for the average American from the GOP>
Thanks Edie – have been praying several times a day for your cousin Philip and all who love him who worry so for him – and for the nurses and doctors to be guided by wisdom…
Thanks, Pat, all prayers are appreciated.
Thanks for the update. Wish it was better. I will NOT start on Big Pharma. You are upset enough.
Thanks, Joanne, I appreciate your prayers.
Puzzle — 3:08 I'll let you have this one Puddy Tat! I am not anemic so the extra iron is not needed.
Daily Kos — I make no beans about it, the US in my estimation has no to very lax gun control regulations, and that falls over the border into Canada. Criminals in Canada mostly get their hand guns and semi automatic weapons from the US. Here is a list of countries and their death rates from guns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
The article notes the US national firearm death rate as 10.38 while "The gun death rate in the United Kingdom in 2011 was 0.23 per 100,000 while in Australia it was 0.86 per 100,000" and Canada is 2.22 per 100,000 as per the Wikipedia article. Honduras has the highest death rate by firearms in the world at 64.8. I was surprised that Texas was #31. I expected its ranking to be much lower.
The New Yorker — Andy nailed this one. I'd like to rewrite #10.
Was "10. Donald Trump declared winner by Donald Trump."
Should be "10. Donald Trump declared
winnerloser by Donald Trump."NY Times — Quote from the NRC Handbook on Tactics: "If you can't get in the front door, then try the back." It is still the war on women no matter how they articulate it. Shame! Shame!
Cartoon — Right, and my ass is a star!
Sorry haven't had the time to do yesterday's articles yet. I was teaching today after physio and then agreed to tutor an 8 year old girl in reading. We will be reading the 1st Harry Potter book, The Philosopher's Stone. I am like a Grandma to my English student's 6 kids so I will do reading etc with them as I can. Amazingly enough, they so far, actually listen to me.
Hooray – I love the idea of you teaching English Lynn – and to use The Philosopher's Stone sounds absolutely wonderful!
Thanks TC – I hope all goes well with the prison visits and the heatwaves.
You'd think the Daily Kos article would make sobering reading – but not to the NRA's apologists who want to arm schoolteachers!
New Yorker – yet again Andy has hit the nail on the head.
NY Times – the annoying thing is that their 'spin' convinces people who don't bother to think!
Cartoon – very scary, and so are all the Repugs!
Glad to see your adapting wwell to a new heat wave, TomCat, and laying the foundations of a good food plan and tropical roster for yourself. You and your guys will have a good prisoner volunteers day, no matter the temperature and if the heat immobilizes you, it may as wel be to let your foot heal at the same time. Good luck with both.
Daily Kos: Excuse me for plagiarizing a comment a give elsewhere on the subject: "Isn't it incredibly sad that the safest place to be in America, Rhodes Island) still has a 13.6 times higher gun death rate (3.14 per 100.000) than the UK (0.23 per 100,000) Sure, in Louisiana the death rate is 82.2 times that of the UK, but who's counting, right? No wonder many Americans don't feel safe and feel the need to protect themselves by buying a gun, especially after a new mass shooting has hit the news again. As if THAT is going to help."
The New Yorker: Andy must have been at the try-outs LOL
NY Times: Just wondering in whose book forcing a woman to have an ultrasound when she wants an abortion is not part of the "war on women"?
Big hurry mode. Prison volunteer day.
Here are the facts.No amount of mourning, singing ,carrying candles,and memorials will solve the problem of "murder" in the USA. It will not bring the dead back to life.Sorry but true.Sensible Gun laws,will certainly help.
An accurate registry of those,who in NO Circumstance should be allowed to purchase weapons . (do not tell me that America is NOT able to do just that), after all ,hackers can even get into the Pentagon secret files. So the technology should be available to present an accurate list.
However also needed is an American public who are sick of the daily tragedies and are willing, ready and able to hold their Representatives feet to the fire Ha, but there,s the Rub(as the immortal bard would say.) This solution is plain common sense, BUT it does not beat MONEY!. I wonder , just how much is involved?.It s way past the time for them to tell Wayne LaPierre to take his guns and go home. I could be much more crude but I desist.This is far too serious a problem. Amerca, your record on gun violence is a worldwide disgrace.