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BlueMTexpat

BlueMTexpat's Journal
BlueMTexpat's Journal
September 17, 2016

Hillary Clinton: ‘Black Girl Magic Is Real’

“You are the changemakers, the path breakers, and the ground shakers,” Clinton said at the Black Women’s Agenda.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-black-girl-magic_us_57dbfd13e4b0071a6e06ab99

Black girl magic, which isn’t in the dictionary just yet, is a phrase used to celebrate the awesomeness of black women.

The event was hosted by the Black Women’s Agenda Symposium Workshop, which is the organization dedicated to addressing disparities faced by black women.

Clinton said that all women have to work harder at the office while still bearing responsibilities at home ― a challenge that can be even more difficult for black women.

Black women, she said, “leave the house every morning, put on that game face that well all practice, and enter a social that consistently challenges your worth ― with the images you see, the lower pay that so many take home; that try to silence your voices and break your spirits. That you remain fierce in the face of the challenges.”
September 17, 2016

Hillary Clinton's Pneumonia Seems to Have Helped Her

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/09/hillary-clintons-pneumonia-seems-have-helped-her

Around Monday or Tuesday of this week, Hillary Clinton's favorables went up about four points and Donald Trump's went down four points. In Clinton's case, maybe her pneumonia generated some sympathy? In Trump's case, it's hard to figure out what might have happened. David Fahrenthold's big story about Trump's charity scams came out around then. The whole "deplorables" thing was getting some attention. And...that's about it. Nothing really comes to mind that might account for a sudden downward spike.

So what's going on? It could be that this is nothing but reversion to the mean after a couple of weeks of Emailgate and Foundationgate taking a toll. That would actually make some sense, since attitudes toward Clinton and Trump have been remarkably stable for the entire past year. In any case, maybe this will help panicky Dems to panic a little less.
September 17, 2016

Hillary Clinton riffs on Republicans telling her to smile more

'Well you don't talk about ISIS with a big grin on your face'

http://uk.businessinsider.com/hillary-clinton-smile-jimmy-fallon-2016-9?r=US&IR=T Report from Hillary's appearance on last night's Tonight Show

...
"They want to see someone who's going to protect us and be strong and tough," Fallon added.

Clinton responded:

"It's especially tricky for women. And it just is because you know there's a lot of serious things. The other night, I was on a show and being asked about ISIS and Iran and I was serious. These are important issues that the country needs to talk about. And the Republicans were saying, 'Oh she looks so serious.' Well you don't talk about ISIS with a big grin on your face. They're a barbaric, evil group that we have to defeat and wipe out. But it is a constant balancing act. How do you kind of keep the energy and the positive spirit while taking seriously what you need to."

Clinton was referring to NBC's Commander-In-Chief Forum that news anchor Matt Lauer hosted on September 7, where both she and her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, discussed national security.
September 17, 2016

Grizzlies observed in open country west of Dutton

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2016/09/16/grizzlies-observed-open-country-west-dutton/90515128/

Whoa! This was apparently the first sighting in the area for a century.

Kurt Pilgeram was outside doing chores at his home five miles west of Dutton on Friday morning when he saw what he thought was a couple of guys on four-wheelers in a field to the southeast of his place.

Dutton is on Interstate 15, about 35 miles northwest of Great Falls.

When the four-wheelers began moving in single file, Pilgeram realized it was four bears — a sow grizzly and three roly-poly cubs — moving across the wheat stubble field, not four-wheelers.

“They are smaller, but they’re not small,” he said of the chubby cubs.
September 17, 2016

This Motown Singer Turned His Wild Mustang Ranch Into a Summer Camp for Baltimore Kids

How a Motown veteran is using his passion for wild horses to help at-risk children.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/national-treasures

What an inspirational person Jar is! His mixed-raced ancestry is uniquely American and I love that he is bringing mustangs and inner-city youth together!

If you visit Jar's home in the summer months, you can watch what happens when children and horses are brought together. Sunshine Acres, a farm in Northern Maryland with the ambiance of the American West, is graced with buildings that feature exposed wood and Native American motifs: carved totem-pole door frames, ceiling murals of horses and riders, and Indian blanket pillows tossed on the furniture.

At 69, Jar exudes an intense and joyful energy, not unlike that of the wild horses he loves so dearly. High cheekbones and dark, deep-set eyes hint at a Native American lineage—Blackfoot on his father's side and Cherokee on his mother's. But for his mother's extraordinary strength and pioneering drive, he might have been one of the struggling children he now welcomes onto his farm.

Dorothy May White was Baltimore’s first female radio disc jockey. She was an inspiration to Jar and his sister, Evonne, and worked hard to get them out of Baltimore’s Somerset Court Housing projects. Her efforts paid off when Jar became Baltimore’s first black male national recording artist of the era.

Dorothy May also gave her children another gift: a means of escape from the city. She regularly took Jar and Evonne to visit their great-grandfather’s farm in Virginia, where Jar experienced the most pivotal event of his life: “When I was three years old my great-grandfather lifted me up and put me on the back of his old mule. I realized then and there, that’s where I needed to be.”
September 16, 2016

Hillary Clinton Returns To Campaigning, Somehow Doesn’t Topple Over Dead

Great satire from Wonkette - but very close to the truth.

In a miracle of modern medical science — or what some are calling “antibiotics and three days of rest” — Hillary Clinton Returned to The Campaign Trail (mandatory cliché brought to you by the Mandatory Cliché Council) Thursday after a bout of pneumonia, and to prove she’s all better, gave two speeches and a press conference. But is it all an act????? Was it her body double?????

At her first appearance, at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, Clinton came onstage to James Brown’s “I Feel Good,” which of course was a far better musical choice than Donald Trump’s constant use of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which really should be taken as a warning but isn’t.


More at: http://wonkette.com/606639/hillary-clinton-returns-to-campaigning-somehow-doesnt-topple-over-dead
September 15, 2016

Hillary Clinton: A stand-in for every anxiety we have

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/hillary-clinton-a-stand-in-for-every-anxiety-we-have/article31887003/

While I don't agree with everything said in the piece, this is an interesting article by someone who used to work with Hillary. It does point out the nearly impossible challenge she has to meet, however.

America feels like a place where no one has a claim on a fixed identity any more, not, at least, until he or she becomes famous. At that point they harden, not into marble, but into wax. The permanently famous – Jack Nicholson, Martha Stewart – enter the wax museum.

This election is the first wax museum election in American history. At issue is whether the American voter will see beyond the logic of the wax museum, and choose (this is the new meme in the liberal American press) a flawed but normal candidate or an abnormal and dangerous one.
...

Ms. Clinton has become, for both left and right, a stand-in for every anxiety we have about a fluid, maybe even collapsing world. To the left, she is a “neoliberal,” selling us down the rivers of global finance. To the right, she is the very devil itself, selling (white) American interests down the river to foreigners of one kind or another.

As a pragmatist standing between the fluidity of global capital, hyper-capitalism and the needs of local America, she can be neither fluid nor solid. I feel for her as I felt for her then. She is forced by impossible circumstances to be this awful simulacrum. To be true to reality, she has to be made of wax.
September 13, 2016

These Gorgeous Photographs Show Indigenous Americans Without the Stereotypes

Three years ago, Matika Wilbur set out on an ambitious undertaking: a vast road trip across America to photograph members of all 562 of America’s federally-recognized tribes.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/cities-are-now/gorgeous-photographs-show-indigenous-americans-without-stereotypes

Images of Native Americans made by non-Natives have a problematic history. During the 19th and early 20th centu­ries, ethnographers often used photos to document and romanticize the last traces of the New World’s “dying cul­tures.” Native Americans survived, but the tradition lives on: Posed images and media stereotypes continue to reduce indigenous peoples to vessels for the American imagination.

Photographer Matika Wilbur, a member of the Tulalip and Swinom­ish tribes, aims to change this. Three years ago, she set out on an ambitious undertaking, a vast road trip across America to photograph members of all 562 of America’s federally-recognized tribes. (That number is now 566.) The first part of this ongoing project was recently displayed in Wilbur’s first solo museum show, Photographic Pres­ence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 at the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Wash. The show featured 40 portraits chosen from Wil­bur’s collection, which so far includes images from the more than 200 tribes she visited in the course of traveling 80,000 miles around the western United States. A fine art book series is also forthcoming from the University of Washington Press.
September 11, 2016

For Thousands at Standing Rock, a Shocking Day After So Much Waiting

After the pipeline decisions, many at the protest site wonder whether future generations will look back on this as a turning point in U.S.-tribal history.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/at-standing-rock-a-shocking-day-after-so-much-waiting-20160910

Shouts could be heard Friday afternoon across the encampment at Standing Rock when the long-anticipated U.S. District Court ruling was announced. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s attempt to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline had failed. The judge would allow construction to move forward.

Then, just 20 minutes later, the ceremonial grounds at the camp erupted in cheers and drumming, people raised fists in the air, some clutching braids of sweetgrass. An order had come from three federal agencies to turn a defeat into what seemed like a stunning success —one with implications across Indian Country, and well beyond. A late afternoon rainstorm pelted the crowds, but spirits were flying high as elders, mothers with babies, young activists, all danced and sang, all celebrating, drums echoing across the camp.

“It truly was an interesting event in the universe,” said Faith Spotted Eagle, member of the Yankton Souix and an elder with the Brave Heart Society. “In one minute we had the judge ruling against us, which we expected, and then all of sudden, the United States issued a memorandum that said the whole issue needed to be looked at. That is major. We affected a nation.”

Dallas Goldtooth agreed. The move is evidence of the power of nonviolent direct action, said Goldtooth, an organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network.


Much more at the link.
September 10, 2016

Let these men teach you how to smile, Hillary Clinton

Or not! IMO, Hillary - and the egg avatars - look much better than ANY of the good old "mansplainers" here.

http://mashable.com/2016/09/10/men-teach-hillary-how-to-smile/#_vLs_.FbA8qh

Throughout the course of her political career, Hillary Clinton has been routinely accused of one irredeemable sin: failing to smile.

From GOP chairman Reince Priebus to conservative commentator Dick Morris to an infinite parade of egg avatars on Twitter, everyone is deeply emotionally invested in getting the candidate to lighten up a little. She's running for president of the United States — and a true commander in chief knows just how to lol.

It's time for Clinton to finally listen to the men who've told her to "smile" her whole life. Clinton has probably always wanted to smile and simply needed a strong man to teach her how.

So here are helpful lessons from some of her most incisive critics.







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