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silveradeptLet's begin with this: If you have a plan to vote, you are much more likely to vote, and the other people around you are much more likely to vote if you talk to them about their plan to vote, too. (There's even a paper on it from Harvard. [PDF]) I live in a ballot-by-mail location, so it's a little easier for me to do civic things like that. Those of you who are not, however, understand that your employer must provide you with time to vote, if your given work shift covers the entirety of the time the polls are open. And that the lines are a lot less crowded if you go before you go to work rather than trying to go after. Also, if you are in the queue to vote when the polls officially close, you are still allowed to vote. And finally, attempts to influence your cote are generally restricted at a polling place, either by distance or some other mechanism. I'd like to believe that most of us have figured out the consequences of 2016. There are organizations looking to help you identify a swing district that you can influence, even if it is not your own.
If you live in a generally Republican state, check and make sure now that you're on the voting rolls, because there's a high probability you've been purged if you're anyone other than a white dude. Because some states will keep doing what they've been explicitly told not to do.
A full 50-state guide to where you can get your voter information and make sure that you're ready and eligible to vote.
Rhode Island Democrats threw their hats in with people much more inclined to support Donald Trump rather than a progressive candidate that mentioned the drinking habits of the legislature.
The man who investigated Bill Clinton says the man investigating Donald Trump is not engaging in a witch hunt. At least there are still a large amount of people who find it utterly inappropriate for another country to be interfering in the electoral process of the United States.
Actions taken by a government agency to take away citizenship documents for Hispanic Americans should be seen as the precursor to far worse actions to follow, because taking away citizenship makes it much easier to claim that you're only about getting rid of those who are here illegally, and anyone who can't prove their citizenship must clearly be here illegally. The administration is now insisting that people with brown skin who live near the border have fradulent birth certificates and aren't actual citizens. Also, staying true to their insistence that all brown people are dangerous, the exemption rate from the travel ban against Muslims has been a paltry 2 percent.
Immigration judges that don't immediately rule in favor of deportation are vulnerable to being replaced by the Administration. Which is entirely in line with Mr. Sessions' insistence that there be less sympathy in the immigration courts, the place where sympathy is a very important thing. There are conflicting rulings working their way up the chain about DACA. There are still several hundred families that have not been reunited, and the government shows no signs of bohering to try to do so. This was after several of those children had psychotropics used on them to make them quieter.
I suppose we knew this when there wasn't warning about the policy shift. And that they did it even after being told that it would have terrible effects on the children. And that various strikes of hunger and school refusal happened in protest, and nothing changed. Because the administration is unwilling to learn from the disaster that was allowing people who should be accorded due process to be captured and attacked by extrajudicial means.
After having lost to the Democrats for many years because the Democrats had effective social programs, the Republicans decided it was time to give some gifts to their base as well, and they've been using running up the debt when they're in power and screaming about the debt when they aren't. If you're looking for an example of our own times, tax a look at the latest tax cuts. Much of what you could call the conservatism of the 20th and 21st centuries might be taking its pages from the Little House on the Prarie books and Rose Wilder. At least, the talking parts. The actual policies are meant more to punish the poor and reward the rich. Given that the rich may be less likely to be moral or ethical, it seems like a bad idea to give them more. Perhaps because they don't feel prone to guilt for the things they do?
That is, when they're not threatening to cancel Medicaid dental and vision benefits for everyone in their state after a judge said they couldn't impose work requirements and make people earn those benefits. When your system is already broken to the point where a person has to nearly die before they can get treated, perhaps a party that valued life would work to make sure that everyone could get care?
Anti-women activists are often pursuing public records requests to make complaints about abortion providers to health agencies. In the process, though, they also often obtain doxxable information on those who use abortion services, which is an additional delightful bonus to them. (Statistics available on abortion practice is apparently available through the health departments of various states. That I did not know.)
When acccused of felony conduct when younger, and questioned over it by Senators, Brett Kavanaugh did his very best to be an angry privileged white man about the entire process. Which makes it much easier to believe that he did terrible things, when he was young and when he was not nearly as young.
There's a case to be made that he lied under oath to the Senators. Some of the possible false claims are that he could drink legally when he was 18, that he had no connections to Yale University other than his own hard work, the meanings of several of his yearbook inscriptions and shout-outs, and the general demeanor of Kavanaugh's previous behavior around drinking and others. (Have some context of what his college days were like, at the least.)
Brett Kavanaugh would not agree to be investigated by the FBI over the allegations, even when the Senators pressed him to do so. The Senators eventually ended up getting the sham of an investigation to be conducted in a week. The investigation was even more of a sham because it was severely limited in its scope.
In a single, excellently-captured image, what the entire process felt like to the observing people, both in person and watching on their screens. Including the famous people in the audience. And that's after he cut off his wife from speaking in an interview conducted on frielndly ground.
Then the Republican chair of the committee expressed his naked partisanship and support for the person accused of felony conduct, claiming that the opposition had done something unprecedented and terrible to a find, upstanding man. This is so far into the speck-plank problem that it's farcical, and yet the response of the good old boys network was immediate, and the focus was quickly shifted away from the terrible behavior of the candidate to how bad everyone in the majority felt that there had even been an accusation in the first place.
Senators were confronted by survivors telling them exactly what their decisions would mean. Including in places they weren't expecting to have to confront their decisions.
We witnessed a bunch of privileged white men throw an extended tantrum that they weren't given what they wanted immediately after they demanded it, and that lesser beings than themselves had the temerity to suggest that they didn't actually deserve any of what they were demanding. Even though there were plenty of men demanding that Kavanaugh be investigated and justice found.
A person who has expressed naked partisanship and has allegations of felony conduct against him was still voted onto the Supreme Court, and, as you might guess, the women who have come forth to accuse him have been given full measure of entitled misogynist rage for daring to speak out. Even though less than one percent of reported assaults are successfully prosecuted and women have lots of very good reasons not to report, it was clear from the start: the Republicans weren't going to believe any accuser, because believing one might lead to believing more, and that might mean having to admit that the likely results of that would be good for everyone, instead of sticking to a strawperson view of the world.
There must be a full investigation into the accusations, even if it turns out that nobody's deliberately lying about what happened. Because a blackout drunk still needs to be called to account for what happened, even if he doesn't remember it. (Even some of the conservative partisans still want a full investigation.)
The current administration isn't very inclined to keep regulating dangerous chemicals, like asbestos. And they also don't seem fond of releasing reports indicating there hasn't been enough done to keep water clear of toxic chemicals.
After deciding that tariffs needed to be assessed against Mexico over wrongheaded beliefs, Mexico decided to target their counter-tariffs to the economies of Republican states. Oh, and also, the trade war with China isn't looking pretty, either. And paper wars with Canada are closing down newspapers and the farmers aren't happy with other tariffs.
The Department of Defense has made a change to its mission to make it closer to its origins as the Department of War.
The amount that the media covered the disaster in Puerto Rico is how much the administration was able or unable to bluster about how well they did in the disaster relief. When you have an administration that seems to be running a perpetual con, having everyone always shouting the truth is necessary to keeping reality straight. Like asking where the money came from to build houses on a golf course that's losing money.
A person who knows nothing suggests that the United States is ready to cause a governmental revolt if the current amdinistrator is impeached. I wouldn't be surprised if he was correct about those people whose slavish devotion to that administrator overrides their ability to see that something strange has happened and deserves investigation. Unfortunately, if he is right about that, those people also tend to be persons with more than sufficient arms to cause damage. For the rest of us, though, the foundations of the country are under siege from someone who knows exactly what he's doing to them. As one of the fronts in that war, anyone who seeks to abridge the freedom of the press seeks to control what the people see, hear, and believe.
A desperate cry from a conservative for other conservatives to return to civility and being able to reserve the moral high ground, rather than engaging in the same tactics they want to believe are solely the province of liberals. There's a couple problems with that, the first inflicted by those other conservatives, especially the ones that support the Current Administrator, who haven't really believed in what the columnist believes are the foundations of conservatism, but have instead glommed to the conservative party as a way of preserving the way of life they desire where white men reign supreme and everyone else are subordinates that have to beg for their existence from those powerful white men. The second is that the politics of respectability and civility are usually wielded in favor of keeping the system the way it is, even if there have been fundamental flaws and harms shown in that system, rather than egaging with the ideas and propositions that come from outside the status quo. It's used for the antithesis of what the columnist wants, which is vigorous debate and letting ideas battle until the best idea is the winning one. I would very much like for the Christians that the columnist calls out to be more engaged in their actions of the people around them and their own behavior, but I really must insist that they do so in a way that takes the whole of their literary canon into account, rather than only the points they personally agree with. Yes, they might decide on civility, but we would hope that a close study would also result in deciding on justice and on helping the oppressed and the downtrodden as well. Which might put them into conflict with the politicians they want to support.
The Vice-Administrator wrote about a president's immorality and demanded resignation or impeachment...when that President was of the opposite political party. Currently, nothing doing.
The Current Administration is still in campaign mode, holding rallies to make sure that the Administrator stays topped up on rhetoric and other ego-boosts. Which he might need, given that there's always a fountain of image captions available for anything that he does.
What appeared to be a sophisticated hacking attempt of the Democratic National Committee turned out to be an unauthorized security test. That said, good work to the firm that caught what was going on and then worked to stop it.
Several subdomains of websites linked to the Curent Administrator and his organization seem to be exchanging regular amounts of data with servers in the Russian Federation. Whether this is graffiti and hacking, or attempting to obfuscate partnerships that are illegal, it's certainly worth looking to seeing what those domains were doing and when.
Remember that the life we live is not normal and nowhere near it. Among other things, it's no longer a joke to reference the National Socialists. But also, there's an entire political ideology built around not caring about anyone else that's currently in power. Because you do care, though, there's a need to make sure you're not burning yourself out and that you're fighting where you can be best put to use. Which might be calling out this weirdness as a sign that the people in charge are not necessarily able to realie how far away from healthy they are.
That said, shame tactics against racism do seem to be working. It's just that there are so many of them, and they're getting invited in from the White House, and they're also so prevalent elsewhere that there doesn't seem to be relief for anyone.
A single-payer system might save spending money in the long run, although it would probably require things to line up just-so to do so.
Charges have been dismissed against persons arrested for protesting at the inauguration of the Current Administrator, after several attempted trials resulted in acquittals or deadlocked juries that did not convict.
Adoption is already a difficult process. Places that discriminate against couples that don't match their morality while also taking in taxpayer dollars make it even more difficult to place all the children with good homes.
Sometimes what you need is a respite to get away from it all, at least for a bit.
Down at the very bottom of this post, because that's the importance that it should have: Stormy Daniels released a book about her encounters with Donald Trump. While it contains graphic depiction of the genitalia of the current administrator, the rest of the book is equally as helpful at describing the Current Administrator and how someone might come to have an affair with him.
If you live in a generally Republican state, check and make sure now that you're on the voting rolls, because there's a high probability you've been purged if you're anyone other than a white dude. Because some states will keep doing what they've been explicitly told not to do.
A full 50-state guide to where you can get your voter information and make sure that you're ready and eligible to vote.
Rhode Island Democrats threw their hats in with people much more inclined to support Donald Trump rather than a progressive candidate that mentioned the drinking habits of the legislature.
The man who investigated Bill Clinton says the man investigating Donald Trump is not engaging in a witch hunt. At least there are still a large amount of people who find it utterly inappropriate for another country to be interfering in the electoral process of the United States.
Actions taken by a government agency to take away citizenship documents for Hispanic Americans should be seen as the precursor to far worse actions to follow, because taking away citizenship makes it much easier to claim that you're only about getting rid of those who are here illegally, and anyone who can't prove their citizenship must clearly be here illegally. The administration is now insisting that people with brown skin who live near the border have fradulent birth certificates and aren't actual citizens. Also, staying true to their insistence that all brown people are dangerous, the exemption rate from the travel ban against Muslims has been a paltry 2 percent.
Immigration judges that don't immediately rule in favor of deportation are vulnerable to being replaced by the Administration. Which is entirely in line with Mr. Sessions' insistence that there be less sympathy in the immigration courts, the place where sympathy is a very important thing. There are conflicting rulings working their way up the chain about DACA. There are still several hundred families that have not been reunited, and the government shows no signs of bohering to try to do so. This was after several of those children had psychotropics used on them to make them quieter.
I suppose we knew this when there wasn't warning about the policy shift. And that they did it even after being told that it would have terrible effects on the children. And that various strikes of hunger and school refusal happened in protest, and nothing changed. Because the administration is unwilling to learn from the disaster that was allowing people who should be accorded due process to be captured and attacked by extrajudicial means.
After having lost to the Democrats for many years because the Democrats had effective social programs, the Republicans decided it was time to give some gifts to their base as well, and they've been using running up the debt when they're in power and screaming about the debt when they aren't. If you're looking for an example of our own times, tax a look at the latest tax cuts. Much of what you could call the conservatism of the 20th and 21st centuries might be taking its pages from the Little House on the Prarie books and Rose Wilder. At least, the talking parts. The actual policies are meant more to punish the poor and reward the rich. Given that the rich may be less likely to be moral or ethical, it seems like a bad idea to give them more. Perhaps because they don't feel prone to guilt for the things they do?
That is, when they're not threatening to cancel Medicaid dental and vision benefits for everyone in their state after a judge said they couldn't impose work requirements and make people earn those benefits. When your system is already broken to the point where a person has to nearly die before they can get treated, perhaps a party that valued life would work to make sure that everyone could get care?
Anti-women activists are often pursuing public records requests to make complaints about abortion providers to health agencies. In the process, though, they also often obtain doxxable information on those who use abortion services, which is an additional delightful bonus to them. (Statistics available on abortion practice is apparently available through the health departments of various states. That I did not know.)
When acccused of felony conduct when younger, and questioned over it by Senators, Brett Kavanaugh did his very best to be an angry privileged white man about the entire process. Which makes it much easier to believe that he did terrible things, when he was young and when he was not nearly as young.
There's a case to be made that he lied under oath to the Senators. Some of the possible false claims are that he could drink legally when he was 18, that he had no connections to Yale University other than his own hard work, the meanings of several of his yearbook inscriptions and shout-outs, and the general demeanor of Kavanaugh's previous behavior around drinking and others. (Have some context of what his college days were like, at the least.)
Brett Kavanaugh would not agree to be investigated by the FBI over the allegations, even when the Senators pressed him to do so. The Senators eventually ended up getting the sham of an investigation to be conducted in a week. The investigation was even more of a sham because it was severely limited in its scope.
In a single, excellently-captured image, what the entire process felt like to the observing people, both in person and watching on their screens. Including the famous people in the audience. And that's after he cut off his wife from speaking in an interview conducted on frielndly ground.
Then the Republican chair of the committee expressed his naked partisanship and support for the person accused of felony conduct, claiming that the opposition had done something unprecedented and terrible to a find, upstanding man. This is so far into the speck-plank problem that it's farcical, and yet the response of the good old boys network was immediate, and the focus was quickly shifted away from the terrible behavior of the candidate to how bad everyone in the majority felt that there had even been an accusation in the first place.
Senators were confronted by survivors telling them exactly what their decisions would mean. Including in places they weren't expecting to have to confront their decisions.
We witnessed a bunch of privileged white men throw an extended tantrum that they weren't given what they wanted immediately after they demanded it, and that lesser beings than themselves had the temerity to suggest that they didn't actually deserve any of what they were demanding. Even though there were plenty of men demanding that Kavanaugh be investigated and justice found.
A person who has expressed naked partisanship and has allegations of felony conduct against him was still voted onto the Supreme Court, and, as you might guess, the women who have come forth to accuse him have been given full measure of entitled misogynist rage for daring to speak out. Even though less than one percent of reported assaults are successfully prosecuted and women have lots of very good reasons not to report, it was clear from the start: the Republicans weren't going to believe any accuser, because believing one might lead to believing more, and that might mean having to admit that the likely results of that would be good for everyone, instead of sticking to a strawperson view of the world.
There must be a full investigation into the accusations, even if it turns out that nobody's deliberately lying about what happened. Because a blackout drunk still needs to be called to account for what happened, even if he doesn't remember it. (Even some of the conservative partisans still want a full investigation.)
The current administration isn't very inclined to keep regulating dangerous chemicals, like asbestos. And they also don't seem fond of releasing reports indicating there hasn't been enough done to keep water clear of toxic chemicals.
After deciding that tariffs needed to be assessed against Mexico over wrongheaded beliefs, Mexico decided to target their counter-tariffs to the economies of Republican states. Oh, and also, the trade war with China isn't looking pretty, either. And paper wars with Canada are closing down newspapers and the farmers aren't happy with other tariffs.
The Department of Defense has made a change to its mission to make it closer to its origins as the Department of War.
The amount that the media covered the disaster in Puerto Rico is how much the administration was able or unable to bluster about how well they did in the disaster relief. When you have an administration that seems to be running a perpetual con, having everyone always shouting the truth is necessary to keeping reality straight. Like asking where the money came from to build houses on a golf course that's losing money.
A person who knows nothing suggests that the United States is ready to cause a governmental revolt if the current amdinistrator is impeached. I wouldn't be surprised if he was correct about those people whose slavish devotion to that administrator overrides their ability to see that something strange has happened and deserves investigation. Unfortunately, if he is right about that, those people also tend to be persons with more than sufficient arms to cause damage. For the rest of us, though, the foundations of the country are under siege from someone who knows exactly what he's doing to them. As one of the fronts in that war, anyone who seeks to abridge the freedom of the press seeks to control what the people see, hear, and believe.
A desperate cry from a conservative for other conservatives to return to civility and being able to reserve the moral high ground, rather than engaging in the same tactics they want to believe are solely the province of liberals. There's a couple problems with that, the first inflicted by those other conservatives, especially the ones that support the Current Administrator, who haven't really believed in what the columnist believes are the foundations of conservatism, but have instead glommed to the conservative party as a way of preserving the way of life they desire where white men reign supreme and everyone else are subordinates that have to beg for their existence from those powerful white men. The second is that the politics of respectability and civility are usually wielded in favor of keeping the system the way it is, even if there have been fundamental flaws and harms shown in that system, rather than egaging with the ideas and propositions that come from outside the status quo. It's used for the antithesis of what the columnist wants, which is vigorous debate and letting ideas battle until the best idea is the winning one. I would very much like for the Christians that the columnist calls out to be more engaged in their actions of the people around them and their own behavior, but I really must insist that they do so in a way that takes the whole of their literary canon into account, rather than only the points they personally agree with. Yes, they might decide on civility, but we would hope that a close study would also result in deciding on justice and on helping the oppressed and the downtrodden as well. Which might put them into conflict with the politicians they want to support.
The Vice-Administrator wrote about a president's immorality and demanded resignation or impeachment...when that President was of the opposite political party. Currently, nothing doing.
The Current Administration is still in campaign mode, holding rallies to make sure that the Administrator stays topped up on rhetoric and other ego-boosts. Which he might need, given that there's always a fountain of image captions available for anything that he does.
What appeared to be a sophisticated hacking attempt of the Democratic National Committee turned out to be an unauthorized security test. That said, good work to the firm that caught what was going on and then worked to stop it.
Several subdomains of websites linked to the Curent Administrator and his organization seem to be exchanging regular amounts of data with servers in the Russian Federation. Whether this is graffiti and hacking, or attempting to obfuscate partnerships that are illegal, it's certainly worth looking to seeing what those domains were doing and when.
Remember that the life we live is not normal and nowhere near it. Among other things, it's no longer a joke to reference the National Socialists. But also, there's an entire political ideology built around not caring about anyone else that's currently in power. Because you do care, though, there's a need to make sure you're not burning yourself out and that you're fighting where you can be best put to use. Which might be calling out this weirdness as a sign that the people in charge are not necessarily able to realie how far away from healthy they are.
That said, shame tactics against racism do seem to be working. It's just that there are so many of them, and they're getting invited in from the White House, and they're also so prevalent elsewhere that there doesn't seem to be relief for anyone.
A single-payer system might save spending money in the long run, although it would probably require things to line up just-so to do so.
Charges have been dismissed against persons arrested for protesting at the inauguration of the Current Administrator, after several attempted trials resulted in acquittals or deadlocked juries that did not convict.
Adoption is already a difficult process. Places that discriminate against couples that don't match their morality while also taking in taxpayer dollars make it even more difficult to place all the children with good homes.
Sometimes what you need is a respite to get away from it all, at least for a bit.
Down at the very bottom of this post, because that's the importance that it should have: Stormy Daniels released a book about her encounters with Donald Trump. While it contains graphic depiction of the genitalia of the current administrator, the rest of the book is equally as helpful at describing the Current Administrator and how someone might come to have an affair with him.
