Sen. Elizabeth Warren is making trouble for the administration by opposing Anthony Weiss, their nominee to be Undersecretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance.
National Review editor Rich “Starbursts” Lowry wants Congress to prevent President Obama from delivering the State of the Union address.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a stent installed after feeling discomfort while exercising today.
If your Facebook feed is filled with people saying racist crap about Michael Brown and Ferguson, you should do some personal housecleaning of your social networks.
Too bad this is satire.
Am I the only one who can successfully fill in a map of the United States?
When I see the name ‘King,’ something stupid, and a headline, I never know if it’s going to be Pete or Steve. This time it’s Pete.
At College Guide, Sarah Butrymowicz wants to know if Detroit can ever attract middle class people without improving its schools.
At Ten Miles Square, Keith Humphreys explains how to apply the lessons of poker to everyday life.
I still can’t believe that Tina Turner is 75 today.
What’s on your mind?
I find that (1) challenging them politely on fact (with links); (2) putting up a stream of articles about white privilege and racism in US history; and (3) liking the cat pictures, family news, and advocating for veterans services–has the effect of encouraging the more close-minded of them to self-censor or to self-purge (otherwise known as excommunication). Others in their network who have had to endure the BS, open up and begin their own interventions.
Some have gone to email to press their case and avoid the scrutiny of other of my friends whom they know check my social media.
Some of the Vietnam Vets who might have done stuff in Nam that they are now ashamed of are the worst, and the most likely to be super-religious Bible quoters.
It’s the ones for whom politics transcends past friendship and collegiality who are the ones that usually drop off.
I very selectively challenge the obviously provable factual errors, and I do like putting up links to articles about the U.S. history of racism. The strange thing is, those at whom these links are directed will never, ever respond to them. But if a discussion ensues with my progressive friends, and it goes on long enough, eventually they might get so wound up that they feel the need to chime in. But those occasions are rare. And those discussions have led to some nasty keyboard altercations. One in particular led to dropping two people because they went from simply disagreeable to a major asshole-iness eruption over the course of a couple of days. I had to apologize to a couple of people for what had been said to them.
I often have thoughts of just dropping from Facebook completely. It is so rife with ignorance and stupidity, and not designed for real discussion. But then I remember that a lot of the people I know never see anything but the Fox News-ie, Glenn Beck-ian, Limbaugh-esque views. And I realize how important it is to let them know that one of their own is really one of those crazy, evil liberals they hear so much about form their right-wing sources. And they see that I am actually a rational, functioning, normal guy. It flies in the face of everything they have been told is true about all those craaaaaazy liberals. So I guess that gives it all some value.
Uh,
Cornwall
Dorset
Devon
Southampton
Kent
Home Counties (?)
Essex
Warwick
Chester
Wiltshire
Gloustershire
Shropshire
Staffordshire
Leicestershire
Lincoln
Norfolk
Suffolk
Buckinghamshire
Yorkshire
Lancashire
Northumberland
…oh shit, and then there’s Wales and Scotland left with things like Glamorgan, Midlothian, Aberdeen, Powys and stuff like that.
How about the states of Australia, the provinces of Canada, the states of Mexico, the states of Brazil, the provinces of China, or the states of India?
Well, no wonder. Americans only learn geography through wars.
I could do marginally better at the states of Mexico than the counties of Britain. North and South Baja are easy. I bet I get close with Guerrero, Oaxaca and Michoacan. Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuilas and Jalisco are…north.
try your luck:
http://lizardpoint.com/geography/mexico-quiz.php
Did those Londoners fare worse on a US geography test than USians would? If it’s Texas Tech students, I’d bet on the Londoners doing better.
But those students did shine on a couple of questions.
Senator Warren: It’s always nice to see that my senator is still doing her job.
Rich Lowry: I’m sure — without wasting my time actually reading his crap — that he has real good Constitutionalistic reasons why the President of the United States shouldn’t fulfill one of parts of his job specifically spelled out in the Constitution.
(Yes, yes, I know it doesn’t need to be as formal a production as it has become, it used to be in written form, etc, etc.)
Article 2; Section 3
Nothing precludes a President from issuing “Information of the State of the Union” to Congress more frequently than once a year. How about every three months? Would make it a bit more difficult for Congress to ignore him and pretend he’s irrelevant.
Someone already poates but here it is again.
Video shows Cleveland officer shot 12-year old within seconds on scene http://t.co/JJncCcPOuA
Seconds…for a child to comprehend the severity of the situation. Let the victim blaming begin! .
They’ve already been headining the kids father having had criminal issues. Cause of course doubt they’d find a record for a 12 year old. So instead let’s focus on the father!
Or we could ban these toy weapons that from a couple of feet away look like the real thing. Or require that they be yellow with red shiny stars. (Can’t do pink because gun manufacturers make real guns in pink for girls.)
I heard it had a bright orange marking but it was removed by someone. Of course, that was the MSM who also said Mike Brown was shot 35 feet away lunging into a car, when he was, in fact, 148 feet away lunging into the car with his hands in the air.
They are supposed to have an orange tip — but apparently they’re easy to remove. Come on, what male teen wants that orange thing that makes it look like a sissy gun? Particularly when removed it looks like the macho real thing.
How many kids (I’ve read of three already plus the young man in the store) have to be shot and die by cops who mistake the toy for a real weapon before pediatricians and child safety experts demand a total recall? And, if it hasn’t happened already, it won’t just be cops that mistake these toys for real guns.
Not just teens. Young boys of every age. And they want to shoot them. At everything. I remember. I’m glad my parents wouldn’t let me have one.
I wasn’t even allowed to watch TV shows that depicted violence. Never saw a single episode of “Gunsmoke” and if not for the James Garner episodes of “Maverick” not sure I saw any westerns before I was fourteen.
Wow! Was that in California? My parents saw plenty of real violence growing up in the ’20s and ’30s, particularly my dad who lived in the inner city as we all did until 1948. My Mom grew up on the northwest edge of the city. They met at work at Carson, Pirie, Scott in the loop. This is not like the situations we discussed in your diary as they were both single and neither was a boss. My mother was a sales clerk and my father was (I forget the title, floor boy?) a guy who moved stock around the store.
My mother was a reader and likely read somewhere that violent TV shows were bad for children. In the early days of TV, many parents that hadn’t grown up with it were cautious in allowing their children much TV. She figured out about the same time that spanking children was also a bad idea.
They’re trashing the mother too!! The corporate media is so gross.
I believe in colonial times that was called “an attainder of the blood” and made sure it was forbidden by the Constitution.
One of my first dates – the father of the girl tells me I can take his daughter to the movies IF I can name all 50 states (no map) and at least 35 state capitols. I got 49 states (native NYer I forgot NJ – Freudian block) and 45 capitols. He let me take her out.
My method on the states was to think of all the vacation trips we had been on and visualize the map as we drove it. We never vacationed in Jersey.