If a thousand armed Blacks had gathered in one place, pointing rifles at federal officers, and two of them later cold-bloodedly assassinated policemen, the federal response would touch every Black neighborhood in America. But the armed white Right gets a pass. Racists are resources to those in power. “The national security state’s legitimacy is based on (white) mass fear and loathing of the Other.”
—Glen Ford at the Black Agenda Report
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
Is it Just Me………
Or is the latest Cadillac Escalade ad, the one that uses David Bowie’s song Fame, the stupidest ad of the year so far?
Canada is a Couple of Hundred Pounds Smarter Today
The great Charlie Pierce made the above comment in response to the news that Senator Ted Cruz has formally renounced his Canadian citizenship, and he follows up with this:
Now, if they don’t build our old friend the Keystone XL pipeline, America will be completely free of noxious imports from Alberta.
Rofl!
The World Cup Begins
It is unique among the mega-huge sporting events in that the quality of the sport is actually lower than the ordinary competitions.
At the World Series, or the Superbowl, or the Stanley Cup, or the FA cup, we have the best teams competing with each other, while in the world cup, you don’t have a team, you have a bunch of (supremely talented) individual players.
On the other hand, I really don’t see FIFA particularly corrupt as compared to, for example, the NCAA, which exists solely to create the myth of “student athletes” in order to codify slavery.
Some Thoughts on Eric Cantor
First, the very serious people inside the Beltway are freaking for a number of reasons:
- The results sh%$ on their “tea party is dead, and the Republican adults are back” meme.
- David Cantor was “people like them”, in that he was a soulless apparatchik climber.
- Freaking out is what they do.
As to the significance, I think that this is all about, as TBogg so eloquently, “All things considered, Eric Cantor probably lost because he’s a dick.”
On a slightly more serious note, Cantor did not take his constituents seriously.
To paraphrase Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill story goes, Cantor never asked for their votes.
The Beltway consensus is that it was all about immigration, but as TBogg, and many others noted, immigration reform was supported by nearly 4 to 1 in the district, and that same night, Lindsay Graham not only won his primary, but did so in a large field with enough of a margin to avoid a runoff.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think that Cantor being Jewish had much to do with his loss, with a margin over 11% in a district that he had dominated before, but I do think that some of the advertising did seem to invoke this (though note that in the article, Salon solipsistically posits that it was anti-Silicon Valley sentiment).
Looking at the ad, where he’s hanging with Mark Zuckerberg, I feel compelled to invoke Mr. Subliminal.
You have an ad with the picture Cantor a guy with a Jewish name who looks stereotypically Jewish, and accuses him of giving their jobs to foreigners, and I wonder if this is not a sly reference to his religion.
Neither You, Nor I, Shall Ever Be This Awesome
Seriously.
The only way that this could be more awesome is if it were a white Persian cat.
I can haz Connery?
Link.
As an FYI, this is on the set of Dr. No.
Holy Crap!
Eric Cantor just lost his primary for reelection to a Teabagger:
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.), the chamber’s second-ranking Republican, was badly beaten in a primary contest Tuesday by an obscure professor with tea party backing — a historic electoral surprise that left the GOP in chaos and the House without its heir apparent.
Cantor, who has represented the Richmond suburbs since 2001, lost by 11 percentage points to Dave Brat, an economist at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va. It was an operatic fall from power, swift and deep and utterly surprising. As late as Tuesday morning, Cantor had felt so confident of victory that he spent the morning at a Starbucks on Capitol Hill, holding a fundraising meeting with lobbyists while his constituents went to the polls.
He did not just lose, he got shellacked.
With the possible exception of John Boehner, whose dislike of, and rivalry with, Cantor was very tangible, the Republican establishment must be profoundly unhappy now.
To paraphrase Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), reports of the Tea Party’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
Not sure where the Dems will go from here, but reaching across the aisle would not be my suggestion.
Because by Devaluing Workers and Listening Cockamamie Theories from Rich People Worked So Well for the Rest of Us
It is sure to be appealed, but a judge in LA has just ruled that California’s teacher tenure laws are unconstitutional:
Teachers union officials denounced a ruling Tuesday by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge deeming job protections for teachers in California as unconstitutional as a misguided attack on teachers and students.
The ruling represents a major loss for the unions and a groundbreaking win by attorneys who argued that state laws governing teacher layoffs, tenure and dismissals harm students by making them more likely to suffer from grossly ineffective instruction.
If the preliminary ruling becomes final and is upheld, the effect will be sweeping across California and possibly the nation.
Judge Rolf M. Treu ruled, in effect, that it was too easy for teachers to gain strong job protections and too difficult to dismiss those who performed poorly in the classroom. If the ruling stands, California will have to craft new rules for hiring and firing teachers.
Rather unsurprisingly, privatizer in chief, Arne Duncan, loves this, because for Wall Street to make money off of our children, they first have to make sure that they have a cowed and cheap work force.
Interestingly enough I had occasion to look up the record of Geoffrey Canada, the hero of the anti-teacher agitprop Waiting for Superman, the former CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone charter schools in response to a sickeningly hagiographic article about him.
What did I discover?
- He was paid $553,000 for a school system with just 1500 students, (link) more than twice the salary of the Chancellor of the New York City Schools (link) a system with 1.1 million students.
- He lied about the graduation rates, basing his numbers on those the graduation rate for entering seniors, not the rate for people entering as freshmen as is the norm, which would yield a 36% drop out rate. (link)
- He has “fired” (dumped) entire classes, including what would have been his first high school class to make his numbers look good. (link)
I have no doubt that there are good charter schools out there, but I’ve let to see one on the national stage.
You have looting behind a not-for-profit corporate façade (Rocketship), widespread forgery and fraud in testing (Michelle Rhee), sexual and financial irregularities (Kevin Johnson, Michelle Rhee’s husband), insane levels of teacher turnover (all of them), and aggressive policies to foist low performing students back on the public school district. (again, pretty much all of them)
Seriously, whenever you take a cursory look at the charter school movement, and the educational-industrial complex that supports them, there are layers of corruption and opacity that are at the core of their business models.
At the core of the issues with our educational system are societal problems of grinding poverty, a porous social safety net, and law enforcement that frequently acts more like an occupying force than peace officers in poor neighborhoods.
Until these are resolved, we will have problems educating poor children, no matter how well our schools are run.
But the current focus on fill in the box testing and privatizing education serves only to make money off the backs of our children’s future.
Another School Shooting
Click for full size pop up
Another day, another shooting
We just had spree killing at a school:
The first bell had just trilled at Troutdale’s Reynolds High School Tuesday morning when the sound of something like fireworks erupted in a locker room by the school gymnasium.
Moments later, a vice principal came over the loudspeaker –“This is not a drill” — and teachers ran through hallways, yelling at students to lock themselves in classrooms and hide.
A “lone gunman” shot and killed freshman Emilio Hoffman, then was found dead a few minutes later in a nearby bathroom. It is the 74th school shooting in the United States since the mass killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012.
December 14, 2012 to today is 543 days, or 77½ weeks, or just under 18 months.
77½ weeks⁄74 shootings. That’s about 1 shooting a week, just at public schools.
Think about it. When you add in various spree killings and act of right wing terrorism that don’t involve school children, Vegas last week, Washington Naval Yard, Isla Vista, and that salon killing in upstate New York, and you end up with more than one shooting a week since Sandy Hook.
Note that this is without any incidents in the state of Texas.
And how many have there been in all of western Europe over that time?
We are insane as a society.
Thank You for Keeping Maryland Weird
I just heard about this on the radio, and confirmed this on the Prince George’s County Police Department Facebook page:
PGPD Issues BOLO for Bunny
The PGPD is asking for our community’s help in finding the burglar who snatched a bunny costume. Please keep your eyes peeled for a 6′ gray and white furry bunny with pink ears and a pink nose.
Unfortunately, we aren’t joking. On June 6, 2014, patrol officers were called to the 4600 block of Calvert Road in College Park for a burglary. Employees discovered a storage shed had been broken into overnight. The only item taken was the costume.
Last week, we told you about how our officers helped a tortoise (http://tinyurl.com/p2wpojj ). Please help us rescue the hare now too.
Anyone with information on this case is asked to call the Prince George’s County Police Department’s Regional Investigation Division – Northern Region at (301) 699–2601. Callers wishing to remain anonymous may call Crime Solvers at 1–866–411–TIPS (8477), text “PGPD plus your crime tip” to CRIMES (274637) on your cell phone or go to www.pgcrimesolvers.com and submit a tip online.
Posted via mobile.
Ummmm……… Isn’t This Straight Out Bribery?
The Republicans in the Virginia State Senate bought off state Senator Phillip Puckett with the offer of a 6-figure job and a permanent judgeship for his wife, which threw control of the chamber back to the Republicans:
Republicans appear to have outmaneuvered Gov. Terry McAuliffe in a state budget standoff by persuading a Democratic senator to resign his seat, at least temporarily giving the GOP control of the chamber and possibly dooming the governor’s push to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
Sen. Phillip P. Puckett (D-Russell) will announce his resignation Monday, effective immediately, paving the way to appoint his daughter to a judgeship and Puckett to the job of deputy director of the state tobacco commission, three people familiar with the plan said Sunday. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
The news prompted outrage among Democrats — and accusations that Republicans were trying to buy the Senate with job offers in order to thwart McAuliffe’s proposal to expand health coverage to 400,000 low-income Virginians.
Del. Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) said Republicans were unable to win the policy argument about Medicaid expansion, so they have resorted to other means.
“It’s astounding to me. The House Republican caucus will do anything and everything to prevent low-income Virginians from getting health care. . . . They figure the only way they could win was to give a job to a state senator,” Surovell said. “At least they can’t offer Terry McAuliffe a job. I hope Terry continues to stand up to these bullies.”
Puckett, a senator since 1998, did not respond to calls seeking comment. Other Republicans denied that Puckett was offered the jobs in exchange for his resignation.
Yeah, sure.
Here is a note to governor McAuliffe: Now is a time to enforce party discipline: If you can block Puckett’s getting a do-nothing job on the tobacco commission, do it. If you can block the appointment of his daughter to a judgeship, do it.
Use the veto pen. It is all fruit of a poisoned tree.
And Then There is George Will………
No link, because I do not want to give him page views, but George Will, the man who coached Ronald Reagan in his debates with Jimmy Carter, using Jimmy Carter’s own briefing books, which had been stolen, while commenting on Reagan’s debate performance on Nightline, has returned to classic form, arguing that women want to make rape allegations, because it is a “coveted status that confers privileges.”
No I won’t link to George Will, but I will link to The Onion article, “College Rape Victim Pretty Thrilled She Gets To Recount Assault To Faculty Committee:
Visibly excited for the thrilling hour ahead, college sophomore Megan Anderson enthusiastically made her way to a meeting with members of her university’s Office of Student Conflict Resolution to offer a detailed account of her recent sexual assault, the eager undergraduate told reporters Tuesday. “I get to go into a room filled with a committee of middle-aged men whose primary concern is upholding the college’s reputation and recount in explicit detail the circumstances of my rape at the hands of another student—I can’t wait,” said the pleased 19-year-old, who noted that she’s particularly looking forward to describing her choice of clothing the night of the assault, explaining the nature of her relationship with her rapist, and entertaining a variety of questions aimed at determining whether she herself invited the attack with her words and actions, all while offering a step-by-step account of the most horrific night of her life. “Don’t get me wrong, it was great being interrogated by the local and campus police, but this way I get to tell university officials who have a vested interest in minimizing campus rape statistics and ensuring the steady inflow of alumni donations what exactly I was drinking and why I could have misremembered events. And to think, once I finally give my entire story, I then get the pleasure of listening as they try to push the whole incident under the rug. Lucky me!”
Seriously, if I had a time machine, I’d go back in time to 1940, and give his mom a shot of Depo-Provera.
What a pathetic sorry excuse for a human being.
Anyone Surprised that the Vegas Gunman are Tied in with Camp Bundy?
Roll Tape!
The Secretary of the Interior has observed that alleged terrorists Jerad and Amanda Miller spent time at the Clive Bundy ranch, or as Wonkette notes, “Oh Look Some Bundy Ranchers Did A Vegas Spree Killing, For Freedom.”
The Bundies have been tryinb very hard to pretend that the Millers were never a part of the protest, but see the tape of Mr. Miller on the Bundy Ranch.
There is a point where right wing American Caucasian entitlement crosses the line to terrorism, and the Millers, and to my mind the Bundys and their fellow travelers are both over that line.
An aggressive investigation of everyone involved with threatening law enforcement and BLM personnel is necessary.
A Mobbed Up Bank is the Least of His Problems
Pope Francis just fired the whole board charged with overseeing the Vatican bank, the Financial Information Authority (AIF):
Pope Francis has removed the entire board of the Vatican’s financial watchdog in his latest attempt to rehabilitate the troubled Vatican bank.
Two years before they were due to step down, the five Italians heading the Financial Information Authority (AIF) have been replaced with a more international group of experts, including one woman.
The change follows reports of clashes between the board members and the body’s Swiss director, René Bruelhart, an anti-money laundering expert.
The new members are Marc Odendall, who manages and advises philanthropic organisations in Switzerland, Juan Zarate, a Harvard law professor who was a security adviser to President George Bush, Joseph Yuvaraj Pillay, former managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and Maria Bianca Farina, the head of two Italian insurance companies.
………
Pope Benedict XVI created the watchdog in 2010 to supervise and regulate the widely discredited Vatican bank – which is officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) – and prevent it being used for money-laundering and for terrorism.
But when Bruelhart, who cleaned up Liechtenstein’s banking system, arrived as director in 2012 he encountered resistance to the reforms from an old guard.
The group reportedly wrote to Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin earlier this year complaining that they were being kept in the dark, after Bruelhart’s arrival.
Reformist members of the Curia had urged Francis to bring in professionals with a global perspective who could work with the Swiss lawyer.
………
And in January he sacked all but one of the five cardinals in the commission that supervises the Vatican bank.
The Vatican Bank is clearly a big can of worms, but compared to Irish Orphanage scandal which includes hundreds of surreptitiously buried bodies and involuntary medical experiments:
It gets worse. One week after revelations of how over the span of 35 years, a County Galway home for unwed mothers cavalierly disposed of the bodies of nearly 800 babies and toddlers on a site that held a septic tank, new reports are leveling a whole different set of charges about what happened to the children of those Irish homes.
In harrowing new information revealed this weekend, the Daily Mail has uncovered medical records that suggest 2,051 children across several Irish care homes were given a diphtheria vaccine from pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome in a suspected illegal drug trial that ran from 1930 to 1936. As the Mail reports, “Michael Dwyer, of Cork University’s School of History, found the child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for commercial use in the UK.” There is no evidence yet – and there may never be – that any family consent was ever offered, or about how many children had adverse effects or died as a result of the vaccinations. Dwyer told the Mail, “The fact that no record of these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London, suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to government, municipal authorities, or the general public. However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners and facilitated by authorities in charge of children’s residential institutions.” In a related story, GSK — formerly Wellcome — revealed Monday on Newstalk Radio that 298 children in 10 different care homes were involved in medical trials in the ’60s and ’70s that left “80 children ill after they were accidentally administered a vaccine intended for cattle.”
Irish Minister of State for Training and Skills Ciaran Cannon has called for a public inquiry into the treatment of the children and their deaths. The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has also called for an investigation, adding that it should be free of Catholic Church interference. “We have to look at the whole culture of mother and baby homes; they’re talking about medical experiments there,” he told RTE Radio this weekend. “They’re very complicated and very sensitive issues, but the only way we will come out of this particular period of our history is when the truth comes out.” And a spokesman for GSK said the latest revelations, “if true, are clearly very distressing.”This is not even the first time information on these kinds of vaccine trials has come to light. In 2010, the Irish Independent uncovered how children born in the homes were subjected to a single “four-in-one” vaccine trial without their mothers’ permission. The children often didn’t even know what they’d been subjected to until well into adulthood. Appallingly, Ireland had no laws regarding medical testing on humans until 1987. Mari Steed, who was born at the Bessborough home in the ’60s, told the Sunday Independent, “We were used as human guinea pigs.”
Yes, very distressing.
Seriously, I don’t think that Francis could live long enough to drain this swamp.
I don’t think that he could live long enough to drain this swamp if he became Pope when he was 12 ……… And his dad was Methuselah.
Deep Thought
I am a F&@#ing Moron
The Cornish pastys did not cook properly last night.
They just were not getting done.
This morning, it hit me: the recipe called for them to be cooked at 210° (165° with a convection oven).
Only the recipe is METRIC, not English, so 210°/165° C is 410°/330° F.
So I will be taking my not particularly cooked pastys from the fridge and putting it in the oven at the appropriate temperature.
Posted via mobile.
Trying New Things………
Cornish (Devonian) pastys just went into the oven.
First time I’ve ever tried them.
I used a very basic recipe (PDF).
To the Americans out there, “Swede” is Rutabaga.
We will see how it goes.
Filling (beef, swede, potatoes, and onions with salt and pepper) seems pretty simple, but I am concerned about the theoretically but not really as simple crust (flour, water, various fats, salt).
As an FYI, the oldest record of a pasty is in neighboring Devon, not Cornwall, so, notwithstanding the EU’s Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) designation of the savory pastry.
Theater Night
As a result of our connection with the Open Space Arts community theater, we scored some tix for the stage version of Sister Act at the Hippodrome, so Sharon and I are having a theater date.
Posted via mobile.
BTW, While We are on the Whole Bergdahl Thing………
That the homecoming party for Bowe Bergdahl because of violence from the right wing knuckle draggers:
The controversy over whether the U.S. should have traded five members of the Taliban for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl reached all the way to Hailey, Idaho, on Wednesday, as the soldier’s hometown canceled its celebration of his freedom amid threats and security worries.
………
Hailey Mayor Fritz Haemmerle told the Los Angeles Times that the town had been deluged with calls and letters of complaint that it was honoring a deserter. The event had been intended as a private celebration, he said, but the organizers decided it was too provocative considering the bitter national dialogue.
“The police chief is aware of the types of people who have threatened to come up and protest this thing,” Haemmerle said. “We’re a town of 8,000 people. The last thing we want is trouble.”
So Haemmerle said he asked the chief to talk to the organizers.
“For better or worse, there are people who blame Bowe for the deaths of other soldiers who searched for him. If that’s true, it’s just tragic,” he said. “We don’t need any more people to get hurt. I don’t think Bowe’s family needs that. It’s not in anyone’s best interests.”
(emphasis mine)
So, the wingers were threatening violence over a private party for parents and relatives to celebrate their son coming home.
All because it was a black Democrat that got him home.
These folks are one open carry incident away from becoming actual terrorists.
You Cannot Make this Sh%$ Up
Oliver “Arms for Hostages” North is criticizing the Obama administration for paying a ransom:
As the right’s outrage over Bowe Bergdahl’s release grew, Chris Hayes joked, “We should definitely get Oliver North to weigh on this one, for maximum absurdity.”
Chris, of course, was kidding. But we were reminded a day later that in this farcical political environment, it’s awfully difficult to joke about things that are likely to be real.Newsmax host and former Republican congressman J.D. Hayworth added his voice today to the growing right-wing outrage over the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in a prisoner exchange with the Taliban, and what better person to discuss the situation with than Oliver North!
North demanded that the media ask the Obama administration if there was “a ransom, a fiscal, financial, money transaction,” with the Taliban as part of the deal. “Was there a ransom paid? Did the government of the United States, either directly or indirectly, finance a terrorist organization?”Oliver North, helping push the political world closer to “maximum absurdity,” also took his concerns to Fox News’ Sean Hannity last night.
………
But even putting that aside, in what universe does Oliver North enter this debate with a straight face?
I realize that it’s become impolite in some circles to point out scandals that rocked Ronaldus Magnus’ White House, but the Reagan administration illegally sold weapons to Iranians in order to secure the release of American prisoners, then used the money to illegally finance a war in Central America. Reagan himself assured the American public that the allegations weren’t true, and those assurances turned out to be the opposite of the truth.
Un dirty-word believable.
The Onion has become completely redundant.