It’s a busy day here in the CatBox. It’s a good thing it’s a WWWendy day, as the TomCat is more than ripe. This is my only article today. Diana, my palliative care nurse rescheduled to a week from tomorrow, so I’ll be fully in the saddle tomorrow. Because WWWendy is my caregiver, everyone else should be jealous!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:47 (average 6:44). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Trump* Virus Update:
US Cases: 4,864,282
US Deaths: 159,000
Short Takes:
From John Pavlovitz:
…People ask me every day how they can go on, where they can find hope, what the secret is to staying positive is in these days that seem to provide no respite from enmity—and I only have one answer:
There is no other choice.
For all but a select few of us, this is the place we’re going to be for the duration, and this is the place we’re going to need to defend and this is the place we’re going to need to renovate with the capital of our lives.
It’s the place we’re going to shout down the bigots,
the place we’re going to outnumber the close-minded,
the place we’re going to demand equity,
the place we’re going to tear down the flags and the statues and mindsets that perpetuate white supremacy,
the place we’re going to expand so that every hungry, exhausted, hurting soul finds rest,
and the place we’re going to lock arms and dig in our heels and push back the terrified bullies trying to drag us backward.
This is my home, it’s the place I’ve lived for half a century and poured my life and my gifts and my heart into, and I’d really rather not uproot my family and leave my friends and flee to places that feel less violent and less cruel and more welcoming—because that’s what we’re supposed to be.
America has never been all that the songs declare we are, never approaching the kind of whitewashed, mythical greatness so many dream of returning to—but it’s been a place where tired, poor, huddled masses yearned to reach and breathe in, because it was aspiring to be safe harbor for liberty in a tempest of inhumanity.
And dammit, I’m going to spend myself to make sure it can become that.
The racists are growing desperate. I think their violence is going to get worse. I think they feel the head winds of History blowing fiercely against them and they are going to make one more frantic, brutal, ugly assault on diversity and decency—and we’ll have to be here to be the line that will not be moved.
Yes, I’m done.
I’m done with this America—and I’m ready to fight for a better one.
Lock arms with me, friends.
We have a stand to make.
Please click through for the rest! AMEN!! RESIST!!
From NY Times: Black lives do not matter nearly as much as white ones when it comes to the death penalty, a new study has found. Building on data at the heart of a landmark 1987 Supreme Court decision, the study concluded that defendants convicted of killing white victims were executed at a rate 17 times greater than those convicted of killing Black victims.
There is little chance that the new findings would alter the current Supreme Court’s support for the death penalty. Its conservative majority has expressed impatience with efforts to block executions, and last month it issued a pair of 5-to-4 rulings in the middle of the night that allowed federal executions to resume after a 17-year hiatus.
The extreme systemic racism evident in the administration of the death penalty makes two truths self-evident. First those 5-4 rulings demonstrate the need to fix SCROTUS (Republican anti-Constitutional VD). Second, the state-murder of helpless convicts, no matter what they did, is the wrong way to convince people that killing is wrong. RESIST!!
From YouTube (a blast of protest): Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Ohio 1970 Kent State University
In the 1960s I witnessed the murder of peaceful demonstrators by police, national guard, and other Republican thugs on several occasions. Republicans Nazis are even more ready to kill us today. Kudos to left-wing protestors! RESIST!!
Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!
