I have a very busy day with volunteer projects to get done, and a three day volunteer trip to Salem to plan for next month. I hope you are all enjoying tour Spring weekend. It’s still rainy here.
Jug Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 2:42 (average 4:38). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From AP: John Legend has launched a campaign to end mass incarceration.
The Grammy-winning singer announced the multiyear initiative, FREE AMERICA, on Monday. He will visit and perform at a correctional facility on Thursday in Austin, Texas, where he also will be part of a press conference with state legislators to discuss Texas’ criminal justice system.
"We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country," Legend said in an interview. "It’s destroying families, it’s destroying communities and we’re the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration."
Legend, 36, will also visit a California state prison and co-host a criminal justice event with Politico in Washington, D.C., later this month. The campaign will include help from other artists — to be announced — and organizations committed to ending mass incarceration.
Kudos! This is so necessary!
From Blue Oregon: Stand up to the gun lobby and pass SB 941
Gun violence claims too many lives. In the past two years, reasonable gun safety proposals haven’t even gotten a vote in the Oregon Legislature.
But it’s a new day. The Oregon Firearm Safety Act would expand the background checks system to individual sales (in addition to gun shops and gun shows). It will close a loophole that is used by those who want to circumvent background checks.
It’s reasonable. It’s modest. And it doesn’t infringe on the rights of responsible gun owners.
Sign the petition and let’s make Oregon safer.
This for mainly Oregonians, and I support it fully! Click through to sign.
From Daily Kos:On November 26, 2013, 38-year-old Ervin Edwards, partially deaf and mentally ill, was arrested by police for sagging his pants and taken to the West Baton Rouge Parish jail in Louisiana. He only lived for a few more minutes inside of the cell.
For 18 months, police have lied over and over again about what happened the night Ervin Edwards died in their custody. Now that a video of their despicable actions has been released, it’s clear they murdered this man and left him to die all alone in his jail cell. The Advocate has provided an annotated video.
Click through for the lies. This is how Republican police handle the crime of saggy pants.
Cartoon:
18 Responses to “Open Thread–4/25/2015”
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3:02 You've got your eyes on those little fishies, don't you?
3:40 The sun set on my puzzle solving.
You can have thye little fishies. I want a marlin for lunch! 🙂
3:11 Beautiful sunset . . . so beautiful that I became distracted.
AP ~ I'm glad someone of stature is taking this on. Maybe he will be able to get things moving a bit. Kudos!
Blue Oregon ~ It doesn't matter how good a law is, if it is for any kind of gun regulation, the NRA and ammosexuals will pounce on it. I hope it passes for all Oregonians' sakes. People are still bitching about the Safe Actt here in NY.
Daily Kos ~ This is getting worse every day. I am too sad for words.
Cartoon ~ Remember the 1970s before the EPA and Clean Air Act?
4:34 average still 4:38. Well, that's a temporary view. We should enjoy it while we can, I guess.
AP – Amen! And, yes, getting everyone connected who is opposed to mass incarceration and working to end it through whatever route will be an excellent thing – and may surprise a lot of people by the sheer numbers.
Blue Oregon – I sign petitions for a state not my own when the action or inaction will affect my state as well. This one is a little bit of a stretch, but it's definitely not inconceivable that some un-background-checked gun toter from Oregon could come to Colorado and endanger me. Blue Oregon must agree, since they accepted my signature.
Daily Kos – Shaun King may be new to Daily Kos, but he is passionate – OMG, is he passionate! – and he comes up with quite a number of damning stories. I did read this one yesterday. Perhaps you should have given it a two-barf-bag alert. Particularly since the comments degenerated so fast into a discussion of what constitutes disrespect in comments (not that that isn't important too, but for heaven's sake.) In reading the source in the Advocate I see that Ervin's mother is living and available for comment. I hope Mike Brown's parents are wildly successful in their lawsuit, and I hope Ervin's mother and any other family can sue and also be wildly successsful. (When I read – OK, skimmed – the Brown lawsuit, I was bemused to notice that the family have retained a Missouri law firm whereas the defendants' counsel are based in Florida.) BTW there is a stunning video explaining theblack experience on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elvsJD-lvoY#t=110 Of course the people who need to see it won't.)
Cartoon – Well, I always say privilege is blinding. Perhaps the pollution also impairs the sight.
Thanks for the link and lawsuits info. Joanne!
Excellent video.
Legend's efforts should increase media attention and momentum of the bipartisan Congressional effort to reduce incarceration rates, at a minimum (sadly federal population is not a very big percent of national number incarcerated).
Petition signed–it took it with my real zip code. I'd like to feel safer when I visit OR, too.
Reminds me of the adage that law enforcement and construction are the two industries that lag well behind everyone else in accepting and adapting to societal changes.
Cartoon: looks like Los Angeles and Sacramento before CA got serious in addressing air quality needs.
Legend has got the right idea! It is time that people start making some noise about this BS. Hope he gets a lot of backing from other artists!
Signed the petition and wish we had some of this kind of thinking in OK!
I never knew that saggy pants was a Death Sentence! Horrible and abysmal treatment by people that are supposed to “protect” us!
Blue Oregon: Signed petition using my CA address and it went through.
Good luck with your projects. It has been a dismal weekend here, cool temps and lots of rain.
AP: Glad John Legend is taking on this project, maybe someone will pay attention to him. We have a higher rate of people incarcerated than any place in the world. It is time for someone to address this and stop it.
Blue Oregon: I signed the petition.
Daily Kos: I watched the video and it is sickening. I wish tasers would be outlawed they are a tool that is overused and too many die from them. I know all cops are not dishonest or cruel, but those who are diminish the profession by the way they act.
Cartoon: Yep!
Glad to hear of the petition – the proportion of the population incararcerated in the USA is so worrying, if memory serves it is worse than China.
Daily Kos – sorry, couldn't watch the video, the story alone makes me want to cry, and cry and cry.
Pat, I included the video only because extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. I would not expecy anyone to watch it, if they don't want to do so.
Puzzle 2.45 (average 4.56 – I do the 40 pc birds)
Our timed are for the 48 piece.
Thanks all. Hugs!
Puzzle — 3:11 Beautiful sunset . . . so beautiful that I became distracted.
AP — ""We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country," Legend said" That is the understatement of the century. Too often, the real criminals are out on the street . . . the state and federal Republicanus/Teabaggerum politicians . . . making the laws that criminalise breathing.
Blue Oregonian — Petition signed. Here in BC, there have been 28 gang related shootings, most resulting in death, in the past 3 months. The South Asians and the Somalis. Some by machine pistols, an illegal weapon in Canada, being smuggled in from the US. This is ridiculous because it puts so many people at risk, innocents and crooks alike.
Daily Kos — And a PA State Rep Costa wants to pass a law that people have to be nice to police. I feel a real disconnect between this and the murder of an unarmed man arrested for saggy pants in Louisiana. Hell, the man couldn't run if he'd wanted to . . . as it was, his pants fell down and tripped him. This is why officers, good ones and bad, get a bad rep.
Cartoon — Is that pollution, or is it money? When I lived in Powell River BC, the site of a now Georgia Pacific paper mill [Koch delinked], the smell and black particulate matter was terrible. If one complained about the smell, there were copious reminders that that was the smell of money. The black particulate would eat through the paint on cars and homes. Imagine what it did to lungs!