In lieu of Glenn’s June recap – not a lwayer, but a legal discussion.
MSNBC – Ending affirmative action: the result of a 50-year Republican passion project
The Lincoln Project – Other Than His Crimes
CBS – Man arrested near Obama’s D.C. home for alleged threats
Parody Project – Fourth of July Special – A New Verse for the National Anthem
Foster Dog Refuses To Leave Her Crate For Weeks
Beau – Let’s talk about Trump, Smith, and a pair of Queens….
Glenn Kirschner – DOJ delayed opening a criminal investigation into Trump for Jan 6. insurrection for more than a year [I do think it is unrealistinc to exoect Chris Wray, ot, for Heaven’s sake, Jeff Rosen, to have opened an investigation. I’d go for March 12, 2021, Garland was confirmed MArch 11, 2021]
The Lincoln Project – Pick a Struggle
Thom Hartmann – This Man Wants To Bring Back Lynchings & He Isn’t Alone
Parody Project – A Tale of Indictment
Can You Solve This Cat Murder Mystery?
Beau – Let’s talk about Minneapolis, cops, and decrees….
Glenn skipped a day and threw me off balance so I’m using this to gain it back
Talking Feds – BREAKING Hunter Biden News EXPLAINED
The Lincoln Project – When Dems Fight
PBS News – New report looks at the changing face of extremist groups in America
Puppet Regime – More unmanned attacks on the Kremlin?
Mama Cat Does The Cutest Thing While She’s In Labor
Beau – Let’s talk about the Dems ending the influence of MAGA Republicans….
Glenn Kirschner – Judge Cannon issues order in Trump prosecution, signaling she will NOT recuse herself from case
The Lincoln Project – Espionage
PBS – Violent rhetoric escalates online after latest Trump indictment (Hey – Someone is covering this!)
Parody Project – Stand with Your Man (not new but still relevant)
Tiny Piglet’s Whole World Changes When She Meets This Baby Cow
Beau – Let’s talk about New Haven and a settlement….
Last week, I got an email from Smithsonian to remind me that Juneteenth is comeing up. And also to give me a link to the NMAA site with history and other information about the day. Even if you have been celebrating it for years, there may be something you can still learn about it – or some detail you may have forgotten. Then, yesterday, I got the email that Heather Cox Richardson has just finished a book to be released mid-September. In her words, it “tries to explain how we got to this political moment.” That’s all I know about the publication details. She does comment that the writing process caused her to rethink a good deal and end up changing her thesis – probably not n uncommon experience for any writer.
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SPLC – Pride Month a Time to Honor History by Challenging Anti-LGBTQ+ Movement
Quote – Pride Month is more than a time to reflect on Stonewall and the other protests that helped solidify the LGBTQ+ movement and push the world to rethink its prejudices against the community. It’s a time to look at the current threats and challenges to the movement. Now, as then, LGBTQ+ people are under attack. Across the nation, conservative state legislators and governors have adopted draconian restrictions on speech, assembly, education, health care and other matters – all in an attempt to violently force LGBTQ+ people back into the closet.
Click through for the full article. I personally don’t think the haters are trying to force people back into closets. I think they are trying to exterminate them. And, yes, I’m starting the month late. Apologies.
Children’s Defense Fund – Childhood Watch Column – “The Mindless Menace of Violence”
Quote – [The day after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated,] Robert Kennedy continued: “When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies—to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered. We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear—only a common desire to retreat from each other—only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.”
Click through for the rest of the column. Not only have we not fixed this, we have allowed it to get increasingly worse. I would point out that the key word is “teach” – and that we have lost any control we ever had over education. It’s futile to say “If he had only lived.” But who can help thinking it?
Colorado Public Radio – Meet the 28 working mothers of the first graduating class from Denver Public Schools’ new community hubs
Quote – The 28 women, all mothers, took part in a special graduation ceremony Saturday. They are the first graduating class from Denver Public Schools’ community hubs. DPS opened the six family resource centers last fall to help with child care, food, language classes, and GED diplomas…. The idea behind the hubs is to empower parents to be role models for their children as lifelong learners…. “We launched this program because there was a need in our community, and it’s helping,” DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero told the graduates. “You should be standing a bit taller today, feeling more excited about what’s in store for you. That is a powerful thing.”
Click through for article. This may seem petty, considering how much damage Lauren Boebert has done on larger stages, but I really, really resent her for the way she has reinforced the already unfair disrepute in which the GED is held by people who hold more conventional diplomas. I’ve worked with the GED, which means I have met and worked with those who have taken it. and I am a big fan. Even if those taking it need it bcause they dropped out of high school for some stupid and/or selfish reason, that isn’t who they are now. (And many didn’t, but faced hardships most of us can barely imagine.) They want to learn. They want to improve their ability to support their families (or even just themselves.) They want to “be all they can be.” And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with wanting – and working – to “better yourself”? Plenty who finish high school never reach that level of self-awareness. (OK, end of rant.)
Food For Thought
Glenn Kirschner – Trump’s Mar-a-Lago “dress rehearsal” to hide docs from DOJ shows premeditation to obstruct justice (Glrnn dordn’t mention the copies today, but I expect to be hearing about that from him very soon.)
The Lincoln Project – In Loving Memory
Ring of Fire – DeSantis Vows To Pack Supreme Court With Morons For Next ‘Quarter Century’
Rocky Mountain Mike – Coordinated Universal Out Of Touch Time (no music – just a bit of silliness. The CC is perfect.)
When your cat brings home a friend… (over 10 minutes, but the variety of odd coupling….)
Beau – Let’s talk about what happened in DC….
Yesterday, I had to laugh out loud at Andy’s headline: “DeSantis Hopes to Seem Like Normal Person by Appearing Next to Elon Musk.” I have to say, if that wouldn’t do it, nothing would. Ordinarily I would not mock someone on the spectrum – but when he has as much money and power as Musk does, it’s kind of in self-defense. Another email was from Robert Reich – it’s quite short – and is about retiring – and I certainly identified with every word, and I’ll bet many of y’all will too. (And – RIP Tina Turner)
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Driver Did Nazi White House Barrier, Rammed Repeatedly, Wingnuts Say It Was Staged
PolitiZoom – Driver Did Nazi White House Barrier, Rammed Repeatedly, Wingnuts Say It Was Staged
Quote – Stalwart defenders of Nazi bad-drivers on Twitter contend that the Nazi banner was simply a prop in a staged false flag operation meant to discredit and smear all peace loving swastika fans, because the flag had been folded, and should not have been placed on the ground while the cop finished his search of the truck… or something.
Right.
Click through for details. It wasn’t staged. It was definitely an assassination attempt – carried out with all the precision and skill that MAGA can come up with (which is thankfully very little of either. Butlet’s not get over confident.)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/former-moscow-officials-reveal-why-they-are-laughing-at-vladimir-putins-kremlin
Daily Beast – Former Moscow Officials Reveal Why They’re Laughing at Putin Now
Quote – Russian President Vladimir Putin declared last week that beer in Prague, where a summit between Kremlin critics recently took place, contains “female sex hormones” and called the opposition officials who met there “half-wits.” On the same day, his best friend Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council and former KGB hardliner, warned of a deadly “radioactive cloud that is now moving towards Western Europe” from Ukraine. The bizarre propaganda lines—apparently meant to evoke fear among Russian exiles of cognitive decline by way of drinking beer, or death via the enriched uranium supplied to Ukraine by the West—fell flat. Putin’s remarks were widely mocked on social media, while experts at Russia’s own State Atomic Agency said that “the story with the approaching cloud is somehow exaggerated.”
Click through for article. I can certainly understand laughing at stupidity, and I’ve done a lot of it in my day. But the people getting killed by Russia – that tends to wipe the grin off my face.
Food For Thought
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Yesterday, I got an alert from CPR that the Christian Glass case has been settled, and that the settlement is the largest known single payout for police violence in the state’s history – $19 million. He was the 22-year-old who had car issues in the middle of nowhere (Clear Creek actually) in the dead of night and called police. As a retired insurance person, the main thing that struck me about that case was that it was 100% preventable. Had he had, and called, a roadside assistance progeam instead of the cops, he would be alive today. Besides the ones available from groups like AAA and Car Talk (theirs is greener than most), which follow the person who holds them and can be used for any car, even if you are neither the owner nor the driver, a lot of insurance companies offer them – that’s the kind I have, and it follows the car, so that if someone else needed to use my car and needed assistance, it would be there. That costs me just over $15.00 a year. There is no reason anyone should need to cal the cops for car problems. That is not to blame him or his parents of course. I’m just ranting because his loss felt like such a tragic waste to me (as, of course, it was.)
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ProPublica – He Became Convinced the School Board Was Pushing “Transgender Bullshit.” He Ended Up Arrested — and Emboldened.
Quote – ProPublica identified 59 people arrested or charged over an 18-month period as a result of turmoil at school board meetings across the country. In the coming weeks, ProPublica will continue to publish stories about how that unrest has played out in various communities and upended once-staid school board meetings. In the dozens of incidents ProPublica examined, some of which involved threats and violence, only one person who disrupted a meeting was given a jail sentence: a college student protesting in support of transgender rights.
Click through for details. We can’t all be crazy – I know a lot of us are sane – but you wouldn’t know that from this article. I sometimes call myself the “queen of workarounds” – but that’s only on computers. What’s needed is a workaround (maybe multiple workarounds0 for normal people to co-exist with wingnots. Because there will always be wingnuts. We have to face that fact.
Crooks & Liars – Biden Goes Full Dark Brandon At G7 Over Question About Russia
Quote – At the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Biden took a question about Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko, saying that Western countries will be running “colossal risks” if they supply Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets. Dark Brandon calmly responded: “It is for them.”… Biden didn’t cave to Russia’s warning. Trump would have.
Click through for story. In a word, GOOD.
Food For Thought
