Apr 042023
 

Yesterday, I received a small grocery order with nothing missing, no substitutions, and everything put into the correct cart (which I label based on how I’ll need to store tham.) That’s just about unheard of. I do have to say there were a few things I would have ordered, and will eventually need, but didn’t because they were marked out of stock or pickup only. That was a bit frustrating, but not nearly as frustrating as ordering and having them not come.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The 19th – What a landmark sweatshop case tells us about Julie Su’s approach to labor
Quote – [J]ustice and remedy for what Jaknang endured would come years later. That happened with the help of a young lawyer who took the lead of a landmark case against the clothing companies that benefited from the workers’ labor. She secured millions in back wages, advocated for a visa that allowed Jaknang and others to remain in the United States and helped her find a fair job. That lawyer, Julie Su, was nominated last month to head the U.S. Labor Department, tasked with enforcing laws involving workers, workplaces and labor unions. Jaknang, 64, described Su as a “kind and hard-working woman” who empowered her to fight for justice at a vulnerable time. This early episode in Su’s career, supporters say, illustrates something important about Su: that the daughter of Chinese immigrants has cultivated a passion for advocating for the nation’s most vulnerable workers, including those who are low-wage, who are immigrants and whose English is limited.
Click through – It matters because Biden has nominated her for Secretary of Labor. Adnd there are people claiming she is hostile to small businesses. Nonsense. She’s hostile to egregious scofflaws. It’s not her fault so many of them own “small” businesses. Someone should do a study on the incidemce of Libertarians among small business owners. I suspect it would raise eyebrows.

Democratic Underground (mia) – TBA*
Click through for a comprehensive (although I do not claim complete) list of school shootings at all educational levels in chronologucal order. My first reaction was, “Someone should set that to music, as Tom Lehrer did with thechemical elements.” But then I thought, no, even that had to be updated eventually, and this… where would one stop?

Food For Thought

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Mar 302023
 

Yesterday, it was pretty quiet. Getting my taxes done was probably the high point of the day. Which is really how I like it. But it does leave me with little to say.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The Warning – Must read: The Washington Post’s “The Blast Effect”
Quote – In response to my video commentary, which I shared last night, on the devastating tragedy at The Covenant School in Nashville, a The Warning community member suggested that the media do the “horrendous but necessary” job of showing what a semi-automatic weapon does to a child’s body. This morning, The Washington Post did just that. I would encourage you to read this, and to share it with your family and friends…. Entire categories of weapons have been illegal in America since 1934, including the Thompson submachine gun (the “Gangster gun”) and sawed-off shotguns.
CLick through for the article if you like but the real story is in the Post. It did not paywall me, and I think that may have been deliberate (in case the connection to Schmidt was why, I did not cut the link.) Trigger warning – it’s hard to get through. It’s interctive, so if any animation stops scroll down just a tad to restart the movement. That’s deliberate, to give you time to read the accompannying text. And share it if possible. If I find a gify long or an archive link after this posts, I’ll put it in a comment or in the next day’s post.

Crooks & Liars – Al Franken Reveals How To Get Around ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Law
Quote – But Franken revealed a workaround: “Luckily, though, it doesn’t say you can’t sing about being gay,” he said, before breaking into a pertinent ditty. Franken continued by wishing Florida teens good luck. “I think you’ll really enjoy reading classics like, “Moby Large Whale With No Subtext Whatsoever,” he added.
This is not the only humor, and there is a video also. The first short take being so serious, I though some relief was needed. (Incidentally, I believe I know why Beethoven became so profoundly deaf, and it wasn’t hereditary.)

Food For Thought

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Feb 162023
 

Glenn Kirschner – Mike Pence will fight a grand jury subpoena to testify about Trump’s election crimes, & he will lose

Twitter – Shannon Watts. It was just a matter of time before there was a two-time survivor.

Thom Hartmann – Biden’s Shocking Net Worth Revealed!

Liberal Redneck – Ohio Train Derailment and Corporate Greed

Brent Terhune – Chinese Spy Balloon

Pittie Begs His Mom To Keep A Pittie Puppy Half His Size

Beau – Let’s talk about Trump’s laptop problem….

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Nov 282022
 

Yesterday, I finished knitting a sweater, finished knitting a collar extention onto a sweatshirt, started a new sweater – and took a fairly deep dive into Joyce Vance’s newsletter, which was in the category of “The Week Ahead” – she doesn’t do one of those every weekend, but she often does. For this coming eeek, she is anticipating the circus (not her term, my interpretatin only) than can be expected in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals pursuant to Jack Smith’s demolition of Judge Cannon. It’s long and nerdy (she says so herself), and I’ll not try to boil it down further here, but I do provide a link. I do hope she is 100% correct – and I feel there is a good chance of it.  ALso, I did a few December cartoons – just enough to take me several days past my next visit to Virgil (this Sunday).

Cartoon – 28 Blackbeard loaded

Short Takes –

Democratic Underground (multigraincracker) – Her mother was also her uncle, DNA test.
Quote – The mother had XY chromosomes in her blood and saliva, but her hair and cheek cells had XX chromosomes. Parts of the daughter’s genome matched each kind of her mother’s mismatched DNA. The daughter had inherited some DNA from her mother which originally belonged to her mother’s fraternal twin brother, who was never born. That makes the mother a chimera, the result of an embryo that had absorbed and incorporated cells from a twin who had vanished before anyone knew he had existed.
Click through for article, and don’t neglest the comments, which include more links to other anomalies. We are constantly learning so much more about genetics – and all of it makes the arrogance of people who insist there are two sexes, period, more outrageous.

Mother Jones – Hundreds of New York Women Are About to Sue Alleged Rapists (and Enablers) Under a Revolutionary New Law
Quote – Now, Carroll and thousands of other sexual assault survivors in New York state are getting a new chance to seek legal accountability against people who harmed them years or decades ago. Under the Adult Survivors Act, New Yorkers who were sexually assaulted as adults but who have run out of time to seek accountability in court will have a one-year “lookback window” to sue their abusers, as well as institutions that were negligent in responding to the assault.
Click through for details. To me, in a kind of rarefied way, this is analogous to the Federal statute of limitations’ exception for availability. But here, its society’s contempt for and distrust of women which conctitutes the unavailability.

DNYUX (also the NY Times, which is paywalled) – At Protests, Guns Are Doing the Talking
Quote – Across the country, openly carrying a gun in public is no longer just an exercise in self-defense — increasingly it is a soapbox for elevating one’s voice and, just as often, quieting someone else’s…. Whether at the local library, in a park or on Main Street, most of these incidents happen where Republicans have fought to expand the ability to bear arms in public, a movement bolstered by a recent Supreme Court ruling on the right to carry firearms outside the home. The loosening of limits has occurred as violent political rhetoric rises and the police in some places fear bloodshed among an armed populace on a hair trigger.
Click through for more – examples and analysis. This is what happens when people (I’m looking at you, SCOTUS) are allowed to conflate speech with something which isn’t speech at all.

Food For Thought

(Just till after the runoff)

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Nov 252022
 

Glenn Kirschner – Special Counsel Jack Smith/DOJ seek interview with Mike Pence about Trump’s insurrection crimes

The Lincoln Project – Last Week in the Republican Party – November 22, 2022

MSNBC – Cherokee Nation Calls On Congress To Fulfill 187-Year-Old Promise

Armageddon Update – We Did Good!

Tigers Freed From Abandoned Train Car After 15 Years

Beau – Let’s talk about Colorado and what we can expect….

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